


though bright be the morning, brighter still be the stars

by bibliomaniac



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Death, Dream Sharing, Falling In Love, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, M/M, Rated M for Adult Themes (but no explicit sexual activity), Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-14 03:39:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17500826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliomaniac/pseuds/bibliomaniac
Summary: In the aftermath of Cole’s death, Hank turns to a cycle of self-destructive behavior to keep himself from thinking about what happened. In doing so, he sleeps, and in sleeping he meets Connor, the sole other occupant of a dreamscape they can mold into whatever they choose. Connor is the only bright part of his otherwise dark days, so Hank isn’t that surprised when he starts falling for him, but he knows that it’s wrong. Connor isn’t real, after all. He’s just a dream, and you can only dream for so long before you have to wake up.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> here’s my fic for the hankcon 2018 big bang! i’ve been sitting on this for a bit so i’m very excited to get this out there. thanks to muchy for setting this up, to my wonderful wonderful artists [fish](http://fishfingersandscarves.tumblr.com) and [ani](http://anifanatical.tumblr.com), and to the folks in the bb18 discord for being a joy to spend time with! 
> 
> they say to write what you know so of course i, a childless individual with limited experience with close family death, wrote a fic largely about…coping with the grief of losing a child?? i hope i’ve managed to be respectful regardless and i apologize if that’s not the case. as always i’ll be putting detailed content warnings in the beginning notes of each chapter. please be mindful of them, this fic deals with some intense things and i want everybody to be safe!
> 
> also, silly thing, but i made a playlist for this fic! you can find it [here on spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/7uc90pmy3rfoft206b5eupdmx/playlist/5CwhysxTUmylU00Bfei60h?si=MoeXtiHeTlicdJqhkHQJXg) and [here on youtube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL55V7g7A45x5IPK2AVTdOxOZtrrGbgj7y).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cws for this chapter: lots of talk about grief, car crash mention, blood mention, canonical child death, hospital/medical mention, unreality warning, brief innuendo, guilt, anxiety, fear of abandonment, alcohol abuse, emetophobia warning

cover design and illustration by [anifanatical](http://anifanatical.tumblr.com/post/182364169495/though-bright-be-the-morning-brighter-still-be)

After a certain point, a point Hank never thought he would reach, he stops crying.

It's not because he's any less sad, though a lot of the sharp pain is just numbness now, an aching, raw lack of feeling that roars deep in his chest. But no, it's not because he's less sad. The numbness is just more of the same, after all. It's because his eyes are just too sore and red and spent to produce any more tears. It's because his muscles have all seized up from the full-body racking sobs and now all he can manage is just lying on the bed looking at the paint on the ceiling. It's because his lungs feel over capacity from the hyperventilation and he doesn't know if he can physically take another deep breath, even if he wanted to.

He's still sad, so much so that the word seems egregiously insufficient for how he really feels, for how his mind plays on repeat the way his locked seatbelt kept him from reaching out for Cole with weak arms, how the blood dripped sluggish and stark against Cole’s neck and down his shirt, for how the lights and sirens blurred together into one horrific nightmare that culminated in the doctor exiting the hallway they weren't allowed access to and telling them Cole hadn't made it.

"We're sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Anderson," he had said, and Laura had collapsed to the ground before even bothering to correct him on her new last name, hands clutching against Hank's forearm as she went. Hank had only stayed standing because the shock made his body rigid, made him just stare and stare with mouth parted as the surgeon explained why they couldn't save him. He heard all the words, too, but they rang in his mind without making any sense.

"We're sorry."

 _What the fuck does that even mean,_  Hank had thought, _what do you mean you're sorry, oh my God, what do you mean, I don't understand,_  while Laura had wailed against Hank's pant leg, _my baby, my baby, God._

It took him a long time, too long, to really understand that they meant Cole was dead. Really only when they asked if they wanted to see him. Laura had requested they wait for Joe—her new husband, nice enough guy the times Hank's talked to him—who was driving there ‘as we speak’, he'll be right there, can we please wait. Hadn't even asked Hank what he thought about that, not that he could've said anything, not that he was thinking anything at all.

He kept right on not thinking anything up until Joe arrived and they went to see Cole. They had shaved his head. It looked wrong, on him, and he looked—just—wrong all around. Too solemn when he was always smiling or pouting or crying or yelling. Too pale when he usually had rosy cheeks from running around. Just wrong.

And that's what Hank thought, is _this is wrong,_  and then _oh God oh God oh fuck oh God he's gone he's dead oh fuck God he's actually dead,_  and he still didn’t drop to the ground and he still didn't say anything even with Joe crying silently and Laura weeping again, because he was afraid if he opened his mouth he might just scream and not stop.

In retrospect, he thinks he might've stopped screaming at some point, just like he stopped crying now after hours curled up in his bed, face pressed into his pillow and getting snot and tears everywhere and not caring. His body just can only take so much, especially banged up like it is, though nothing like—just bruises, a few abrasions, some muscle strain from the whiplash. A big ol' airbag burn on his nose. They said it'd heal fast. Nothing like—

Well. Nothing like Cole, who's dead, dead, dead.

His tear ducts make a valiant attempt at bringing more tears to his eyes and fail. Tired. He can't cry anymore because he's tired, is the point he was trying to make, if there was any at all. You just get too tired to keep crying.

And even if he wants to stay awake to keep torturing himself, and he doesn't know if he does, at some point you also get too tired to be awake, and so it is that Hank falls asleep on his snotty gross pillow and stops thinking.

When he opens his eyes, he immediately knows he's dreaming. Not just because he's not in his bed or because he's in some dark featureless place he's never seen before in real life; there's also just this feeling that says _this isn't real, you're not really here._

He walks around aimlessly for a while for lack of anything else to do, and he's just accepted that there won't be anything to see here when he sees someone sitting on the ground with their back turned to him.

"Uh," he calls out, because why not, "Hey."

They look over their shoulder at him, blinking, and give him a slow smile that looks kind of like the sun breaking over the horizon. And—it's strange. He knows it's strange. But when he sees that smile, he knows in the same way he knew this was a dream that this guy is...important, somehow. To him. To everything. 

"Hello," says the man, still smiling. "I didn't think there was anyone here."

"Me either." Hank scratches his neck, taking in this guy's appearance speculatively like it'll help him figure out where the feeling came from. It doesn't, though. He's never seen him before, but he's an attractive guy, with clean-cut brown hair that curls into one eye and freckles dotting his face. "This is a weird-ass dream."

The man laughs, now, fully turning around by swinging his legs to face Hank. "Are you dreaming too, then?"

"Too?" Hank snorts, shaking his head. "Pretty sure it's just me, but whatever."

"We can agree to disagree," the man offers with another smile, this time a bit wry. "What's your name? Do you have one?"

"Seems like something you should know," Hank mutters, kind of petulant. "But fine. Hank. I'm Hank."

"Connor." Connor pats the nothing-ground next to him, a respectable distance away. "You should sit, Hank."

Normally he might protest, but this already isn't normal and it's a dream anyway, so Hank shrugs and sits. Connor nods, pleased. "Thank you. I know this is all a bit odd."

"Dreams are all weird as fuck. Like, you're back in college and you haven't taken the class, and then next you know your final is being administered by the news anchor you fell asleep not really watching." Hank shrugs. "As things go, some guy in a dark room could be worse." Awful wording on his part, because usually his dreams about cute guys in badly-lit rooms are a lot different than this one, but Connor doesn't have to know that. Or maybe he does, seeing as how he's a figment of Hank's mind or whatever, but he figures that doesn't bear thinking about too much.

"How kind of you," Connor says, eyes twinkling, then leans over a bit like he's about to tell a secret. "But that's not the only reason this is odd. You know how after you recognize you're dreaming you're supposed to be able to make whatever you want happen in the dream?"

"Uh, sure, yeah."

"Watch this." Connor taps the ground and the nothing becomes populated with stars and swirling nebulas.

 

illustration by [fishfingersandscarves](http://fishfingersandscarves.tumblr.com/post/182364434980/hey-i-was-paired-with-anifanatical-to)

Hank gasps, pinwheeling backwards in shock, grabbing for something solid only to find the ground is still present. Connor grins over at him, excited. "Cool, right?"

"Fuck, warn a guy," Hank wheezes, grasping ineffectually at the surface that looks for all the world like it's not there.

"Sorry." Connor's grin dims, which makes him feel kinda bad.

"It's, uh. Fine, I guess." Hank runs a finger along the ground, his heart starting to calm now that he's assured it's an illusion. "How'd you manage that, anyway? Just—thought real hard about it?"

"Yeah, just concentrate on whatever."

Hank drums his hands against his knees, then concentrates on the familiar: a boat rocking along a calm lake in the sun. It appears some distance away, edges knit into the stars. "Huh. Funky."

"Right? I've been experimenting. You can make anything here, as long as you can imagine it. I think." They both watch a comet streak across the space. It looks almost cartoonish, though, like what someone thinks a comet should look like if they've only ever seen it on television. 

"God, what kind of kid's show dream is this supposed to be," Hank says, wrinkling up his nose, but 'kid's show' reminds him of kids which reminds him of Cole and he sobers up real fast after that. Cole loved space and shit like that. This past birthday, he asked Hank if he could put up glow-in-the-dark stars all over the ceiling, and Hank told him no because he was worried about the fucking _paint,_  God—

The space abruptly goes nothing-dark again.

From a distance, Hank swears he hears the sound of metal crushing inward and tires sliding against icy asphalt. 

He shoots up to his feet, breathing faster, and starts backing away. "No," he says, shaking his head. "No."

"Hank?" Connor blinks at him, looking concerned, but he doesn't need his fucking _concern,_  he needs to get the fuck _away_ from here.

"I need to wake up. I need to wake up right now."

"Wait, Hank—" Connor too gets to his feet, stepping forward. "You're the first person I've seen here. Stay?"

His voice is almost pathetic, and his eyes are round and brown and heartbreaking, and Hank almost considers thinking about it for a split second before he sees headlights coming from around some nonexistent bend.

"No, no, I need to wake up. This is just a dream," Hank says, his voice rising in pitch, frantic. "This is just a fucking dream and I need to get _out!"_

"Please," he thinks Connor might whisper, but it's all getting too close and too real and too much, so he doesn't really give that much of a fuck when he imagines real hard that he's anywhere but here.

He wakes up with a start in his bed, panting, hand pressed to his chest, and looks up at the ceiling as he falls back against the pillows. It's blank and perfect and he finds himself wishing, strangely, that it were covered in plastic stars instead.

And then, because he's not that tired anymore, he starts crying again, curling up as small as he can and sobbing into his fists. There's nothing here to remind him of Cole, just perfect fucking paint and the room he can't imagine going in, just his bruises and snotty pillows. Just—just nothing. Nothing worthwhile. Like that dream space, just nothing and imaginary stars and—

And some random dream guy who doesn't exist, and then him, the fuckup who murdered his son by going on a drive to the park in the cold because he'd been too fucking busy at work to spend time with his son and thought somehow that could make up for it.

God.  _God._ He bites harshly at his lip to stop a wail from coming out. It breaks the skin, and his tears flow down towards the corners of his mouth, salt burning in the wound. A bit of pain, but nothing compared to the rest of all this. He cries and cries until the tears hurt, and then he decides on a whim that he'd much rather be drunk.

He doesn't like getting drunk. Not since college; he knows that he loses control sometimes when he's fucked up, and he didn't need that while he was working all the time to become Lieutenant, not while he was trying his damndest to be the force's youngest ever Captain, not that any of that matters in the fucking least now. He didn't get drunk, because he needed to be in control always, and alcohol makes that harder. But everything is already out of control. The car, him, this entire fucking situation, he doesn't have any control over it, so what's the fucking difference if he breaks out that bottle of whiskey Jeff gave him when he got promoted?

He stumbles out of bed and to the kitchen, and he finds the cabinet where he shoved the whiskey, and he finds a shot glass and he fills it and downs the whiskey and relishes in the burn in his throat.

And then he fills the glass again. Drinks that, too.

Three glasses in he decides he doesn't need the glass anymore and just goes straight for the bottle, and half the bottle in he starts coughing and gags and has to run to the bathroom to throw up, but it's fine because he's still drunk and his throat burns with regurgitated whiskey and stomach acid, but he's not crying or thinking anymore and he figures that's about as good as he'll get.

And, probably, better than he really deserves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ani](http://anifanatical.tumblr.com) did some fucking FANTASTIC cover art here and watching the process of it was kick. ass. the colors? the symbolism? the STARS??? fuck! me! up! also [fish](http://fishfingersandscarves.tumblr.com) began the methodical process of also kicking my ass with their amazing artwork; the colors are gorgeous and i am unworthy


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cws for this chapter: alcohol abuse/hangover, canonical past child death, talk about funerals and other things to do with the aftermath of recent death, brief emetophobia warning, car crash mention and mention of potential punishment for irresponsible driving, brief talk about abandonment, unreality warning, again a lot of talk about grief, anxiety/trauma related to driving, food mention

Hank isn't sure what time it is, half-dozing with his cheek against the toilet, when he hears his phone ringing from the bedroom where he left it. Too early, too much, whenever it is, but he shuffles over to the bedroom with something that could resemble balance if you squinted real hard, which he is anyway because he never closed his curtain and it's bright as shit out. He gets to the phone on the fourth ring.

"What," he rasps, disinterested and still probably somewhere between drunk and hung over.

"Hank," says Laura from the phone, voice dull in a way he hasn't heard since their divorce. "We, uh, we need to work out some things today. Um. They gave me—a pamphlet. And I've been—been Googling—"

For a moment he doesn't understand what she means, strung out from bad sleep and the remnants of the alcohol, and his exhausted mind struggles to wrap itself around her words. "A...pamphlet? Laura, what—" And then he realizes she's probably talking about arrangements for their dead son, and he steps back until he's against the wall, slumps against it just because it's nearest. "Oh. Oh, yeah."

"Yeah, um. We have to choose a funeral home, uh, that'll need to be...pretty soon...and, um. Figure out what to do with—" She exhales, and the sound is harsh against the speakers. "With his—" She leaves that hanging, but he knows what she means, and his heart breaks even further. "Joe's been putting together a list of people to notify and figuring out who's in town to invite for the. The service. Uh, you want to—to invite anybody from, from work? Jeff and Ben maybe? I don't know if the numbers I have for them are up to date—"

"I'll call them," Hank says. His voice sounds strange to himself, like it's not his, with how cracked and defeated it comes out. "I, uh, Jeff's sister's funeral was—was nice. I can. I can ask him some questions?"

"Yeah, sure," Laura says, sounding just as defeated. "You...you have any strong preferences about...methods of, um." She takes another ragged breath. "Like. Burial or cremation."

"Preferences," he echoes, and almost feels like laughing. Does he have _preferences_  for how they deal with the body of their kid. "I don't know. Might be nice, uh. Might be nice to—to visit a..." He doesn't say grave, or headstone or anything, just shakes his head even though she can't see it. "You know."

"Right. That's, uh, that's gonna be more expensive, but—"

"I'll take care of it."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure." God, this conversation doesn't even feel real.

"Okay, uh. Okay. So you can call and—there's some other stuff, we need to get—certificates, let his school know—I think I can get some help with that, uh. My mom's coming into town. And. I think Nick and his husband can make it too, we'll see." She yawns, and it fills the otherwise awkward silence. "So."

"Right." She doesn't ask about his family; they both know they're all long gone. Probably wouldn't have invited them even if that weren't the case. "I'll get that done and let you know."

"All right." The silence continues a bit longer, then she offers a cordial, "See you."

"Mmhm." He hangs up, drops the phone next to him, and rubs his hands over his face. He'd cry again, except for he doesn't really even feel connected enough to his body right now to know how that would work. He just stares blankly at his bedspread for some other indeterminate length of time before picking the phone back up to contact Jeff.

Jeffrey Fowler, the man he might call his best friend if he weren't his boss, picks up on the first ring. "Hank, Jesus," he says before Hank can get anything out. "Got the report from the cops on the scene last night. I wasn't expecting to hear from you today, you're already on bereavement leave for at least a week—fuck, sorry, I'm going about this the wrong way. I should probably ask how you're doing."

Hank does laugh, then, a hollow chuckle. "How do you think?"

"Okay, fair. Dumb question. Christ, Hank, I'm—you're gonna hear this a lot, enough it won't sound like much, but I'm so, so sorry."

"Yeah." It already doesn't sound like much. "I, uh. I guess work is settled, but I wanted to ask about the funeral home for—for Jamie's service."

"Oh, yeah. Hang on, it should be in my emails still." Hank doesn't think Jeff has ever deleted an email or gotten rid of a paper in his life, so that tracks. There's some rustling as he finds and relays the name of the place. "You, uh. You need anything? Carolyn is already offering to bring over food. Don't actually think I can stop her."

Hank thinks of the pancakes he was going to make for Cole this morning. He thinks he might throw up again if he has to look in his fridge and see the eggs he got especially for it. "Yeah, sure. Thanks, Jeff. Other than that, I'm—" He doesn't say fine. It'd be a flat-out fucking lie. "I can't think of anything."

"Right, yeah. I bet it won't take too much convincing to get her to make some of that rhubarb crumble you like, though."

"Yeah. Thanks."

Jeff seems to sense that Hank isn't really interested in the conversation, which is good because that's true. "You okay with me telling Ben? Just so you have to make one less phone call."

"Sure," Hank says, head lolling back against the wall gently. He has a headache. Probably he's dehydrated. And still hung over. He's amazed, distantly, at his coherency.

"Okay. Uh. I'll let you go, but—this is gonna be a rough time, Hank, I'm not going to lie to you. Don't make it harder on yourself than you have to. Ask for help if you need it, all right?"

"Mm." He's sure Jeff realizes that sound isn't actually a yes, but he takes it anyway, hangs up and leaves Hank be with his thoughts, which mostly involve that he deserves for this to be as hard as it can be, seeing as how it's his fault. (The truck driver, sure, and that's gonna be some other kind of hell, Laura's probably gonna want to take that to trial since they didn't have their chains on for the unseasonably cold weather, but—fuck. He can't think about that right now. Not now, not now when he just wants to curl up in a ball and be alone.)

He texts Laura the name Jeff gave him and then, already exhausted for all he's only been properly awake all of a half hour, falls into a fitful, light sleep right there against the wall.

His dream this time is full of snow, drifting down sluggishly to carpet the ground and the trees, and some kind of river that's frozen over. Looks like it's been snowing for a while, from the look of it, and he reminds himself it's ridiculous to apply logic to a dream anyway.

He treks forward, looking around and taking in how gray and lifeless everything looks, until he sees in the distance a snow-covered figure against some kind of trellis. Roses, they look like, if they had been subject to the worst winter Detroit has seen in a while.

He walks cautiously closer to the figure, and blinks when he finds it familiar. "Connor?" He's had recurring dreams before, but usually not so close together, and usually not with the same people he doesn't know. Maybe it was just still on his mind. "You, uh. You okay?"

"That's a dumb question," Connor says coolly, eerily reminiscent of his conversation with Jeff earlier.

"Uh. Because—because you're covered in snow?" If this is the same kind of dream as earlier, it occurs to him that the snow might only be here because Connor wants it to be. Which is weird, but dream logic and all, he supposes.

"No, Hank. Because you left me here _alone."_

"Oh." Hank frowns. "I mean, I couldn't stay. This is just a dream anyway."

Connor snorts, burying his head in his knees. "Right. Can't even make someone stay in a dream, I guess."

Even weirder, but...dream logic?

"Look, I’m sorry, or…whatever. But there was something coming, uh—I couldn't—I couldn't deal with it, all right?"

"What was it?" Connor asks, voice muffled by his knees.

"I don't want to talk about it," Hank mutters. "I'll confront my bullshit good and never, thanks." There's silence after that, just the snow falling, and Hank eventually asks, "What is this place? Did you, uh—imagine it? Or whatever."

"Yeah."

"Someplace you know?" Dumb question, again, considering he's asking a figment of his own imagination, but he sure doesn't recognize it.

"You could say that."

It goes quiet again. Hank huffs, sitting down next to Connor, and concentrates on the sun coming out and melting all the snow. "I'm sorry. I have my own bullshit, but—sorry it impacted you." Might as well play along with whatever the hell this is, at least.

Connor peeks out from his knees, looks at Hank and then the dew sparkling on the leaves in the imaginary sun. "Okay," he says finally, and the garden dissolves around them. "Well, until you leave next, then. A whole world of our creation. What do you want?"

Hank keeps himself from thinking about Cole, because he doesn't want that chasing him out of here again. Even if this whole thing is weird as fuck, it's better than being awake and thinking about funeral arrangements. "You like dogs? I've been thinking about getting one."

Connor lights up. "I love dogs."

Hank conjures a relatively accurate St. Bernard, running circles around them and barking joyfully, and Hank calls him Sumo after the name Cole had picked out after learning about sumo wrestling on TV, and he tries not to think about Cole and to think instead about how happy Connor looks playing fetch with dog made out of nothing, and then when the thought comes to him that it's kind of messed up his subconscious is making up cute twinks playing with dogs all domestic-like to populate his dreams, he tries not to think about that either.

Which is easier when Connor ropes him into the game of fetch and then into tug-of-war after that, and they keep at it until Hank hears the distant ringing of a phone, and he sees Connor smiling all sad before he wakes up to another call from Laura about the arrangements.

He works things out with her, and they get the whole thing scheduled for two days later, but Hank would be lying if he said his full mind were on that and not a bit on the dream.

The day inches by, full of texts with Laura finalizing things, asking him if he still has that black suit from her father's funeral five years back, asking if potluck is fine for after the service, and he doesn't have the energy to ask why they need to feed people in the first place like it's some kind of celebration that a six-year-old died. She might say it's supposed to celebrate his life even if she didn't believe it, 'cause Joe was raised Christian and that's a thing with him, and Hank thinks he might smash his phone if he heard that. She brings up that his car is in an impound lot, asks if he's planning on getting it repaired.

The idea of driving the car his son died in makes nausea roil in his gut, and he spits out a no, and she just sighs and tells him he'll need to call them and tell them that.

She doesn't bring up a trial yet, but he knows she will. Always trying to be practical, even here, but he also knows it's gonna be a vengeance thing. Justice, she'd say. He's the cop, so maybe that's something he's supposed to understand, but mostly he just wants to fall asleep again and get away from all of this. 

It seems to him a particular kind of cruelty that there's so much to take care of after a death, the time when he feels least capable of taking care of anything. He forgets food is supposed to be a thing, even, until Carolyn drops by full of hugs and platitudes and carrying two Pyrex dishes and four other Tupperware dishes. For the next few days, she says, just some sides and things she says, I'll come and pick these dishes up in a few days don't you even worry, she says, and then she leaves just like that. Carolyn has always been nice, and he's never felt like he deserved it less than now.

He does eat the rice casserole though, and he downs half of the rhubarb crumble straight from the dish with a fork before he feels too sick to continue.

Honestly, it's the best part of the day when he lugs himself into bed and passes out and sees Connor waiting with a wave and their fake-ass dog, and maybe that's pathetic as fuck, but he can't bring himself to care when Connor smiles and asks him if he wants to take their fake-ass dog on a fake-ass hike so he can have a fake-ass good time instead of dwelling on his real-ass problems.

(Connor doesn't say all that, but Lord knows Hank is thinking it.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had to look up for this one the steps you’d take after a death in the family, but i couldn’t find one specifically for kids and i also couldn’t find a reasonable timeline for funeral services or anything so i’m making some assumptions combined with my memory of past funerals. unfortunately, my memory is shit. also i’m not always a big casserole person but i have a rice casserole recipe i really like so. it makes an appearance here


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cws for this chapter: depicts a funeral with an open casket for a child, canonical past child death, mention of car crash, parental grieving, guilt, mention of past bad behavior from hank’s dad (no physical abuse but lots of yelling), worry about bad parenting, alcohol abuse, brief emetophobia mention, morbid coping mechanisms, brief potentially blasphemous statement, talk about divorce, unreality warning

The day of the funeral comes after an evening spent teaching his brain figment how to play poker and a morning spent hyperventilating in front of his fancy suit. It’d feel fitting if it were rainy, but it isn’t, just kind of cloudy, an early October gray that lightens as the day wears on towards noon. 

Hank gets to the funeral home early along with Laura and Joe. It’s supposed to be some kind of kindness, to allow them time with their son before the viewing and before the whole service, but Hank is wondering now if it’s really that kind at all because he’s going to be all red-eyed and blotchy-faced when everybody else starts to arrive.

They had decided on open casket, mostly because Laura had read something about it helping you process the loss better or something. Make it all real. Hank doesn’t think a single thing could make this real, honestly, not even seeing Cole pale in a tiny suit he didn’t own before this, with a pillow carefully arranged to disguise the place where his head hit the car door. It doesn’t even look like him. It looks like somebody made a bad mannequin and is trying to pass it off as their son. He can only stare at it, even though Laura is crying again, Joe too.

After a while, Laura asks in a voice all choked-up from sobbing, “You—you, uh, want a moment?”

She’s probably asking because she knows he hates crying in front of people. Maybe she thinks that’s why he’s not crying, something other than the shock and feeling of disconnection. It’s a nice gesture anyway, and he nods.

They leave the room, Laura leaning heavily against Joe, and Hank continues staring at Cole blankly.

“That isn’t you,” he finally whispers, clears his throat. “Dunno if I believe in souls or anything, but. You’re not in there, I know that much.” It doesn’t make him feel any better to say that, though, just reminds him that Cole is _gone,_  and he hangs his head. “Fuck,” he mumbles. “Sorry. Language. But— _fuck._  Fuck, I’m so fucking _sorry,_  Cole.” 

And that brings back the tears, and he starts weeping, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes in a desperate bid to keep it at bay. “Fuck, _shit,_ I’m so sorry, Cole, I didn’t—I didn’t mean— _fuck.”_  Who the fuck cares what he meant. “I just wanted to take you to the park—” Who the fuck cares what he _wanted._ “God, _Cole,_  I’m _sorry,_ ” and a keening wail escapes him before he claps one hand to his mouth. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he repeats into his hand, “It should’ve been me, it should’ve—you should be here, Cole. Not...here, but. Not— _fuck.”_

 

illustration by [fishfingersandscarves](http://fishfingersandscarves.tumblr.com/post/182364434980/hey-i-was-paired-with-anifanatical-to)

By the time the tears die down again, it’s almost time for the service to start, and Hank flees past Laura and Joe with long steps until he reaches the bathroom. He splashes water on his face and pats it down with a paper towel, then looks at himself in the mirror.

Just a blotchy old fuck-up with a dead son, which is pretty much what he expected.

He barely remembers the service after it happens. He knows he gives a eulogy, and he knows that he falters in the middle of it, staring at the words and wondering how anybody ever thought they could encapsulate anybody’s life in a speech, even one as short as Cole’s. When he looks up he sees Jeff smiling encouragingly, and then he finds his place and continues in the same dull voice he started with. They have a visitation after that, and then they head to the cemetery for the committal with a few people, mostly family, while some of Laura’s friends and Joe’s church community set up the food at some hall or other.

He cries again when they lower Cole’s coffin into the ground, people or no, and he only goes to the thing afterwards because Joe had signed him up to narrate some picture slideshow and Laura tells him she can’t do it by herself. But right after that he leaves, slips out the doors and calls a taxi home because he still doesn’t have a car yet and doesn’t know if he could bring himself to drive anyway, and he walks straight to the bottle of whiskey half-finished and still on the table and downs it as fast as he can manage without it coming back up.

It doesn’t take long for him to get drunk, and it doesn’t take long either for his drunk mind to decide going into Cole’s room is a fine idea. It isn’t, obviously, because he breaks down as soon as the door opens. Cole’s bedspread is patterned with cartoon robots and stars—the fucking stars again, _God_ —and while most of his shit is over at Laura’s since he only does every other weekend here in the first place (did, he’s gonna have to remember that, past tense), there’s still remnants of him everywhere. The pajamas he threw on the floor instead of putting in the hamper like Hank always asked him. The dog plushie Hank got him from that rigged shooting game at the fair, the one with lopsided eyes and fur in the most audacious neon purple Hank’s ever seen. A couple of drawings hung up on a corkboard—‘cause, you know, the fucking _paint,_ couldn’t use _tape_ —and the bookshelf with some of his favorites. A plastic bin with cars and some dinosaurs and shit. Mostly just generic six-year-old stuff, ‘cause it’s not really like six years old is enough to figure out what you’re really into, at least not for Hank. Hell, when he was six, he tried some of the neighbor’s sparkly purple nail polish and actually thought it was a good look for him.

His dad had disagreed, loudly, and Hank hadn’t worn nail polish afterwards, at least not until his brief punk phase in his teens. His dad had yelled about that too, obviously. He had yelled about most things. Never really got physical, but he had a lot of opinions and hated that Hank usually disagreed with them, sometimes on purpose. When Laura had gotten pregnant, a planned thing back when they were both still trying hard to make things work, Hank had gotten so excited and then flipped out that evening. You know, what if I’m just like him, what if I fuck him up like he fucked me up, all that bullshit, and Laura had to sit down with him for like a straight fifteen minutes and tell him that he can decide right _now_  that he wasn’t gonna be his dad with this baby, that it’s not just something that happens just like that. Hank had decided right then he wasn’t gonna yell at Cole over his decisions, that he’d be supportive and help him explore his interests and shit.

Cole had never tried out nail polish, so Hank couldn’t exactly prove himself in that way, but he had told Cole he couldn’t put stars up on the ceiling and now he can’t tell Cole anything ever again, can’t ever keep any kind of promise ‘cause he doesn’t have a kid to keep a promise _to,_  and he’d go over and weep on the bed or something all movie-scene dramatic except for he never actually got past the doorway.

It feels wrong to be here. Not his space, not his place to exist in, not with how he’s failed.

He closes the door and rests his face against it instead, lets the cool of the wood seep into his flushed cheeks and forehead until it doesn’t feel cold anymore. It’d be dumb as fuck to get sentimental about that, like he’s wrecking the cold of the door too, ruining the integrity of Cole’s room, but he’s dumb and also drunk so he gets sentimental anyway and pulls back.

Luckily his room doesn’t have any integrity or anything left to wreck, so he stumbles in there and lies down diagonal across the bed, remembers to go on his side so he doesn’t aspirate vomit or something. He doesn’t decide that his dreams would involve a lot less wallowing and therefore be nicer so much as just passes out by virtue of lying down, but the end result is nonetheless that he falls asleep and ends up in another dream.

This time, though, he doesn’t walk immediately to go find Connor. He just lies down on the ground and slings an arm across his chest, and in a morbid passing thought, slings the other arm over too until they’re crossed over his sternum, and then closes his eyes and imagines himself in a grave like Cole is now.

“Jesus, Hank,” says Connor’s voice from above, after a few minutes, sounding horrified. 

“Jesus came back to life after three days,” Hank mumbles. Okay, maybe he’s still wallowing a bit even here, but he just buried his _kid,_  he thinks he has some kind of right. “No such luck here, so nah, I figure either he’s not around or doesn’t give a shit.”

“Uh, okay. That’s—surprisingly theological.” A pause. “You...want to...talk?”

Hank snorts, but doesn’t move. 

But the ground does, and he opens his eyes at feeling a gentle rocking movement, and finds both him and Connor in a wooden rowboat on a lake. Sorta like what he had imagined in that first dream, if the boat were shitty.

“A boat? A shitty boat.”

“You made one before. Thought you might—” Connor gives a half-shrug, peering at him with an inscrutable frown. “And I don’t know much about boats.”

“Clearly.” Hank concentrates on the boat he had as a kid. A Tiara 2700 Open, a good, solid, practical power boat. One good thing his dad had ever done for their family, was showing them their way around a boat. He doesn’t have one now, doesn’t have time for the upkeep or even really to take it out, but he had gotten his current house mostly because it’s on the water and he likes being able to see it when he gets home from work. It’s calming. “See? This is a boat.”

“Sure is,” Connor says, and perches on the side expectantly. “Very boat-y. So you care to explain why I found you in a grave?”

“Not a real one.”

“Not an explanation,” Connor says, folding his arms and raising an eyebrow.

The water is calm underneath them, probably because it’s imaginary. Hank stares at it, then sighs. He can’t believe he’s about to vent to himself, practically, but he supposes it’s not much weirder than any of the rest of this. “Buried my son today.”

“Shit,” Connor swears, leaning forward. His petulant frown is gone, replaced by what looks like genuine sympathy. “I’m sorry, Hank.”

Hank shakes his head, lips pressed tightly together. “You know, I’ve heard that so much it barely even—sorry. What the hell is that even supposed to mean? What, that people feel bad for me? I know they do. Everybody there at that funeral, I know they were all thinking _oh I can’t even imagine,_  and what they mean is _I can’t imagine this happening to me, and if it did I’d feel awful about it._  Right? Or—or maybe they mean _man it really sucks that a child is dead and now all that’s left is his divorced parents who have no idea what to do_ —” He takes a deep, gulping breath, and clenches at the edge of the boat with his fingers. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what any of it means anymore.”

Connor is staring at him; he can tell from his periphery. Finally, he exhales. “I don’t know what the rest of them mean, or—if you mean ‘it’ in the sense of, you know, the world, the meaning of life. I can’t help with any of that. But I can tell you what I mean when I say I’m sorry.”

“What’d that be.”

“I mean that I know you’re hurting, and I know I can’t help, so all I can do is just—acknowledge that. That I know you’re hurting, that I know you’re right to be hurting, and I wish you didn’t have to be. But all I can do is be here. And be sorry.”

Hank turns to look properly at Connor, who offers a small, embarrassed smile.

“Huh. Well. Then—thanks, I guess.”

“Yeah.” Connor fidgets under Hank’s speculative gaze. “So, I asked before, but—do you want to talk about it?”

“Like, talk about what? He’s dead. That’s—that’s most of it.”

“Is it?” The question is simple, but Connor’s eyebrows are raised again.

“I don’t know. I guess not.” Hank leans over the side a bit to try to trail his fingers in the water. His dad would’ve yelled at him for that, too, for making the boat rock, or for being dangerous or whatever, but that’s not really a risk here. “His name was, uh. Cole. He was six. Like—like recent, his birthday is—was. September 23rd, uh. We asked if he wanted any kind of theme and he asked for aliens. God, my internet ads were fucked for weeks, targeting me like I was some conspiracy theorist instead of just, like, a dad with a kid who liked aliens, Christ.”

Connor nods for him to continue, smiling faintly.

“So we went pretty all-out. Easy theme, right? Last year he said for his theme he wanted sprinkles, and like—how the fuck do you make a theme out of that—there were a lot of rainbows, and an ice cream bar for his friends, it was a fuckin’ mess. And, I mean. This is, uh, the first birthday without—last birthday Laura and I had the divorce papers and everything, but it wasn’t—I hadn’t moved out yet. So, uh. First birthday without both of us together, you know? We wanted to make it...I don’t know. Special. Normal, even, maybe. Show we were still a unified front for him, I guess. So we got him alien PJ’s and this ridiculous fuckin’ cutout and the cake had this big green fucker on it and it was fun. And, uh, he asked for glow-in-the-dark stars, and we got some for him with the rest of his loot, and—I don’t know. I figured, uh. I figured maybe...like, maybe that’d just be in his room in Laura’s house, he hadn’t really bothered doing much decoration at mine anyway. I figured, like, he wasn’t too comfy there yet. Didn’t blame him, either, but—he asked me to put up some stars in his room and mine, up on the ceiling so he could see ‘em at night, and I—” He feels tears coming to his eyes again and chuckles weakly at how lame this is. “I told him if we put them up they’d ruin the paint, and since I was still new in the house—fuck.”

Connor quietly gets up from his place across the boat to sit next to Hank, which is also bad boat etiquette probably, but this is all still imaginary so who gives a fuck. Just as quietly, he puts a gentle hand on Hank’s shoulder.

“God, it’s so fucking lame to get worked up about some fucking stars,” Hank says, sniffling.

“I don’t think it’s about the stars,” Connor says softly, and he’s probably right.

Hank doesn’t say anything after that, and neither does Connor. Hank just keeps crying, and Connor keeps his hand on Hank’s shoulder and occasionally rubs his thumb in circles, and they sit together, just a man and his imaginary friend—or, you know, whatever—on an imaginary boat. 

But, well. It’s still kinda nice.

Kinda a lot nice, really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have no idea how funerals proceed. again running off my memories but again again my memory is very bad. apologies for inaccuracies if they’re present. the purple nail polish is a brief homage to my younger brother, who used to wear some whenever my sister and i painted our nails when he was really young. also i had to look up boats and i just found a random one from around the time when hank would’ve been a kid but i don’t know anything about pricing or whatever so—whatever, it might be unrealistic but w/e w/e
> 
> [fish](http://fishfingersandscarves.tumblr.com) broke my heart with this illustration oh my god


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cws for this chapter: alcohol abuse, unhealthy coping mechanisms, food mention, unreality warning, talk about car crashes and prosecution thereof (semi-graphically), a LOT of guilt, past canonical child death, brief suicidal ideation and thinking about russian roulette, gun mention, some despair and hopelessness, hank imagines seeing his dead son blaming him, talk about assigning blame, past parental death, depiction of blood and injury

It’d be a lie to say Hank falls into any kind of rhythm when his entire world has been thrown off his beat, but for the next few days, there’s at least something. He works with Laura to get all the government shit sorted, they make sure the headstone went in all right and all that, but mostly he’s just home. He gets more alcohol—and God bless the modern era, he gets it from delivery drones, so he doesn’t have to deal with anybody looking at him all suspicious for walking into a liquor store disheveled and red-eyed and trying to buy five bottles of scotch—and drinks it whenever everything feels too much. And, whenever he falls asleep, he hangs out with Connor.

He teaches Connor a bit about boats, and Connor talks excitedly about museums, about what goes into keeping their collections intact. Hank wonders idly if he read some article about conservation science at some point, wonders what might’ve ingrained it into his subconscious with such detail, but eventually decides it doesn’t really bear thinking about too much. They share an interest in old jazz, and they spend a while arguing about how one song goes once, since neither of them can bring up anything past what they remember. (After a while, they both agree they probably don’t know the song that well and laugh about it a bit before moving on.)

Connor might be just a dream, but he’s fun. A lot more fun than all the shit he has to deal with while he’s awake, that’s for sure, and he finds himself looking forward to the times when he gets tired enough to fall asleep. And he’s a good guy too, a lot better than Hank would expect his mind could conjure up. He’ll just sit next to Hank when Hank is remembering Cole, drop a hand on his shoulder or his back, or he’ll offer to listen while Hank vents about his day. He’s a good friend, or what a good friend would be like if he were real.

He’s well aware how fucky this whole thing is, but he tries to tell himself it makes him get through another day, then. You know. Whatever, probably.

So that’s the few days after the funeral. Okay. Not great, not even really good, but—but he’s kickin’, barely, for those few days.

Everything goes to shit, which is something he didn’t really know could happen even more than it already has been, when Laura calls him up in the nighttime.

He’s pushing some leftovers around the plate, this time from Ben’s family, when the call comes in. Laura doesn’t usually call late, anymore, and he has a moment of fear before he remembers things can’t really go much worse, that she can’t be calling about Cole, and he answers with his heart already in the pit of his stomach.

“Hey.”

“Hey. Uh—Hank.”

“…Yeah?”

“You’re not gonna want to talk about this, but—you’re, uh, we’re going to have to, you know? I promise I wouldn’t be bringing it up if we didn’t have to talk about it.”

That doesn’t make him feel much better, obviously. He puts down his fork. “What.”

“So—the police station called. Uh, guess they still had me as a—okay, I’ll just get right into it. Look. They wanna know if you’re gonna press charges against that driver and his company.”

Hank’s gut turns to ice, and he briefly contemplates hanging up. She’d just call again, though, or come over.

“And, uh, I’m sure you know that I want to.”

“Yeah,” Hank says woodenly. “Yeah, I figured.”

“Right.” She clears her throat. “So?”

“It…it’d have to be me, huh.”

“I mean, you’d have to testify.” There’s a silence. “You don’t want to.”

“I mean, just—it’s not exactly that I don’t _want_ to, um.” Hank can feel panic crawling up through his veins from his stomach, slow, but ever faster. “It’s just.”

“Just what,” she says, with a frown in her voice. “Is this, like, a—trying to be a big person thing—”

God, that couldn’t be further from the truth. “I— _no,_  Jesus. It’s—”

“So what, Hank? The guy didn’t put his chains on, he shoulda had them on, they said that might’ve helped.”

“Yeah, I _know,_  Laura! Fuck, you think I don’t _know?_  It’s not that—it’s—fuck.”

“It’s fucking _what,_  Hank! He killed our—he killed _my baby!”_

“And so did I,” Hank bursts out, cold flowering over his chest, head starting to hurt. “Yeah? I’m the one who took him on that fucking car ride. Didn’t check the weather either, _that’s_  for fucking sure, just took him out to the park without even asking if he wanted to go, tried to frame it like a surprise because he was so bummed about me missing that presentation in his class the other day—“

“Oh,” Laura says, punched-out and quiet, like a realization.

“Just crammed him into the car for a fun ride to the park with Dad to go play on some dilapidated fucking old swings like he does every recess anyway because I wanted to make it up to him and I had no other ideas about how to do it, and it was a lame-ass idea in the first place but none of that fucking _matters_  as much as the part where _I’m the fucking reason he was in that car, Laura,_ which means  _I’m_ the one who  _fucking killed him!”_

He’s breathing harshly into the phone, but Laura doesn’t say anything for a few moments.

“So if you wanna put that guy on trial, whatever, but I should be right up there with him.”

“Hank,” she says. “That’s not—you didn’t—”

“God, Laura, don’t even try that,” he snaps back, voice ragged. “We can—fuck. We can talk about this later.”

“Hank,” she repeats, louder, pleading, and he hangs up before she can try and tell him it’s not his fault.

He leaves his plate there, then, and his phone too, and stomps to his room, and he doesn’t cry. He just feels numb again, and the numbness roars in his ears. He lies down with his pillow folded over his ears. It’s not really like there’s any sound to shut out, but he wants to try anyway, even if the real voice he doesn’t want to hear is his own, whispering in his mind _you killed him, you killed him._

He can only take so much of that before he rolls over to his nightstand, hands hesitating over the knob for a bit before firmly grasping it and pulling it open. There’s a lot of shit inside, but underneath the false bottom he installed is a revolver and some ammo, and in a fit of self-hatred and sheer despair he empties all the bullets out but one and rotates the cylinder.

“I could do it,” he says out loud. He stares at it, starting to go teary despite his numbness. He could try just one shot. Just one shot, a one out of six chance, and—well, if he lost those odds, maybe that’d just means he deserved it. 

He keeps staring until it goes blurry in his fingers, thinks of the sound complaint his neighbors might file, of the beat cop on duty that might come to investigate, of how it would get to Ben and then Fowler and then Laura and then everybody else. He thinks of what they might say. Would they see it coming? Would they mourn? Would they—would anybody secretly think he deserved it?

He chokes out a sob, pressing a hand to his eyes and then his mouth, and unloads the gun and puts it back in the bottom, replaces the false bottom, slams the drawer shut, pulls the pillow over his head again and screams.

It takes him a while to get to sleep after that, and he thinks his phone might go off a few times, but he’s able to ignore it until his eyes open into nothingness. Almost immediately, he hears the sound of a truck engine, and he recoils. “ _No_ —”

Connor comes trotting over. “Oh, Hank! You’re—“ He stops in his tracks and frowns. “You don’t look great. What’s wrong?”

Headlights appear from around a corner that should not exist, and Hank knows he should just stop thinking about this, that he can make this stop, but instead he just stares as a shape comes around that corner. He can tell pretty fast it’s not the truck, which isn’t surprising, because the truck was never exactly what he was scared of.

Cole, pale like Hank saw him in the casket but with blood trickling down his neck like Hank saw him in the car, shuffles forward. 

 

 

illustration by [fishfingersandscarves](http://fishfingersandscarves.tumblr.com/post/182364434980/hey-i-was-paired-with-anifanatical-to)  

“Hank?” Connor asks. Hank can’t respond, or make Cole leave, or—or anything. All he can do is back away.

“Dad,” Cole says. He had dropped ‘Daddy’ when he started school; Hank still remembers the frozen smile he wore when he first heard it, how it reminded him that Cole was getting older. “Why did you kill me?”

“…Hank?” Connor again, sounding increasingly worried.

“If I weren’t in that car—”

“Hank, come on, snap out of it,” Connor says, and he’s next to Hank now and tugging at his shoulder.

“—I wouldn’t have died and you know it.”

“Bullshit,” Connor mutters, and Hank tears his eyes away from Cole to glance at Connor.

“It’s not bullshit, it’s the truth.”

“Like fuck it is.”

“Why, Dad?” Cole walks ever closer, and Hank looks back at him.

“Oh, my God. Fuck this. Hank, listen to me, you need to quit this so we can talk this out or whatever, but I’m not going to let you torture yourself by conjuring up some vision of your son as a zombie bent on tormenting you from the afterlife. It’s not fair to you, but if that’s not enough to convince you, it’s not fair to _him_  either.”

“None of this is fair to him. He’s _dead!”_

“Yeah, Hank, he is,” Connor says, a bit colder than Hank would’ve expected of him, and Hank glares at his stern expression. “He is dead, and he’s going to stay that way, and you don’t have the right to bring him back just for your own shitty coping mechanisms. _Look_  at this, Hank. Your _son._  Do you really remember him this way?”

And Hank looks, and remembers how wrong he thought Cole looked like this, and—God. Connor is right. Fuck, Cole didn’t look like this, he wouldn’t act like this. Even after the divorce, even when they both knew it was hard at him, he always tried to have a smile for his dad.

Fuck.

The thing that isn’t Cole disappears, and Hank sits down on the ground. After a second or two, Connor sits with him.

“I thought about shooting myself today,” Hank says. His voice rings hollow.

“Oh.” Connor doesn’t move closer like before. “Are you still thinking about it?”

“No. Or—I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe.”

Connor nods slowly. “What exactly happened with Cole?”

“You couldn’t guess?”

“How about you just tell me so I don’t have to.”

Hank sighs, dips his head against his knees. “I was driving him to the park. Didn’t check the weather or anything, but it was colder than normal for this time of year, and it had rained earlier, so—ice, I guess, or maybe it was compacted snow, I dunno. I wasn’t even outside because I had just gotten home from work at the district. There was this big case I had been working on for a few weeks, and I just finished it that day, and Cole had this thing at school that I missed, so—I dunno. I figured, I had time for once, we could go to the park. We were on a bridge and this truck driver didn’t take the proper precautions for the weather, he spun out, I swerved to avoid him, the car flipped. Cole hit his head against the car somewhere real hard and I guess the brain damage was too bad for them to save him. So there you go, I guess. Happy?”

“Of course I’m not happy to hear any of that,” Connor says, and now he has that gentleness back in his voice and he’s scooting closer to rest a hand on Hank’s back, rubbing soothingly over it. “But also you’re still full of shit.”

Hank can’t even muster another glare.

“Just because you were driving the car, just because you were the one taking the park, none of that means you’re why he died.”

“Uh-huh.”

“God, you’re stubborn,” he says, but light and teasing. It feels almost out of place in this conversation. “You never know when somebody’s time is going to come. How do you know that—what, you didn’t take him to the park, just took him out for a walk, and he slipped on something? Or the next day at school, he falls off the monkey bars? Or a month from now, he gets real sick and doesn’t get better? Or maybe another few months, or a year, or maybe eighty years. You don’t know.”

“But none of that _happened._ ”

“Yeah, exactly. My point is you have no way of knowing how it would’ve if this hadn’t happened the way it did, so it doesn’t bear thinking about like you stole some kind of life from him by trying to do a nice thing for him. You don’t know what life he would’ve had, but just because it’s gone doesn’t mean you stole it, and it doesn’t mean you have to blame yourself for it, either. What happened is _awful._  It’s awful, Hank, and I’m still sorry it happened, but if you’re not going to blame—I don’t know, the car manufacturer, or whoever didn’t salt that road, or the truck driver, or whoever didn’t remind him to prepare properly, or—there are so many factors here, Hank. Why is it just your fault? Why is it your fault for not knowing what the future holds for everybody you care about?”

Hank huffs. “Easy for you to say.”

“No, it’s not,” Connor says pointedly, “Because my parents died driving me to college.”

Hank immediately freezes. “Oh, God. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t know. I went through a hell of a lot of therapy trying not to blame myself for it, though. What if I had taken a plane? What if I had been the one driving instead of—I had stayed up all night panicking about the drive, so I was asleep.” He shakes his head. “What if I had gone someplace closer. You know. My older brother Niles ended up having to work two jobs to help put me through undergrad. I felt really guilty for that, too. But. I can’t—everything can’t be my fault.”

“Well, yeah.”

“No, Hank, I mean it _can’t_  be, because the alternative is that it _is_  my fault they died, and it _is_ my fault Niles nearly worked himself to death for me, and I couldn’t take that.”

Hank looks over at Connor’s profile, and sees his jaw is set, that he’s swallowing in a way that usually means somebody is about to lose their shit. He hesitates, then reaches out his own arm to Connor’s waist, to pull him in a bit closer in a kind of side hug.

“Well, I know how that feels, anyway,” he says gruffly, ignoring that Connor feels warm against him in a way that feels way too real to be a dream, even if he knows it is. He’s ignoring, too, the feeling of something slotting into place, because that’s just something that is beyond thinking about, especially in all the rest of this.

“I’m supposed to be comforting you,” Connor says on a hint of a watery sniffle. “Or telling you off, or something.”

“You can consider me told,” Hank says, and shivers when Connor’s head drops onto his shoulder. “I mean—it’s good advice. I’m still—you know. It’s still real fresh. But, uh…”

“We can work on it,” Connor murmurs, and the sound vibrates against him, and he’s still ignoring it all, but probably real fucking badly.

“Yeah,” Hank says, mostly because he thinks Connor could’ve asked him for anything right then and he’d probably say yes. “Sure.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Hank echoes back, and eventually, Connor pulls away from him and gives an uneven smile. 

“I think you said you were going to teach me how to fish.”

Hank coughs, trying to get his voice back in order before he says anything dumb. “I think I actually said it’d be stupid to try to teach you to fish when you could just imagine a fish on your hook whenever you wanted.”

“And you still said you’d do it when I asked nicely,” Connor says, smile much brighter, and then he adds in a little wink and Hank inhales sharply, heart pounding in a way that’s getting a lot harder to ignore and even harder not to identify.

“God. Fine. Weirdo,” Hank says, conjuring the boat and a lake with randomly placed fish. Connor laughs when he sees the boat has been named “The Pointless Exercise”, and Hank can’t stop himself from smiling in return.

This…isn’t great. For so many reasons, reasons Hank doesn’t want to even think about, not that he wants to think about any of this. But then again, in a detached kind of way, he supposes it would be appropriate that a pathetic man like him would do something pathetic like catching feelings for somebody who exists only in his dreams.

Pointless exercise is right. But whatever, this isn’t about catching feelings. This is about catching fish with his brain figment, and hopefully it’s a mindless activity enough that he won’t have to think about Cole _or_  Connor, and it’ll all just be—fine.

Yeah. It’s fine. Fine, because Hank doesn’t think he could take the alternative here either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this whole chapter is weird in so many ways but it fulfills its purpose i suppose? oh also all the shit about boats and fishing is drawing heavily from that one post about hank’s house and how he’s on the water and has some fishing stuff in his living room. i wanted to integrate that into at least one fic so i ended up doing it here.
> 
> [fish](http://fishfingersandscarves.tumblr.com) murdered me again with this drawing and then blamed me for it. which is, you know. fair actually.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cws for this chapter: talk about punishment for vehicular manslaughter, guilt, past car crash and canonical child death, grief over the aforementioned, alchohol abuse, unreality warning, some ableist language, brief mention of assumed potential consent issues based off a misunderstanding, mention of divorce, talk about loneliness, death, potentially suicidal ideation, some depressive thinking, some talk about being trapped

He wakes up with a shitload of missed calls from Laura but feeling surprisingly well-rested, enough so that he actually calls her back and tells her that he’s fine with pressing charges against the company for not having better checks and balances in place, but not the driver specifically.

“Is that the guilt talking or you?” Laura asks, in that same blunt way she always has.

“Me. The guy lost control of his truck and ended up killing a kid, Laura. I’m pretty sure he feels about as shitty as he can already, and I’m sure in the process of the trial they’ll be figuring out what role he played in all this anyway, but I don’t want to make it worse on him than it already is if it doesn’t have to be.”

“Uh-huh,” Laura says suspiciously. “Well. Okay. We’ll see how things end up turning out, I guess.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

The call ends, and Hank tries to calm his heart by taking deep breaths. Then he calls Jeff to ask for another week of bereavement leave—just to make sure his head is on straight, he says, not that he’s sure at this point that’ll happen exactly.

“Hank, uh—I’m sorry to bring this up, but. Have you considered counseling or anything like that? You know the department—”

Hank cuts him off. “I don’t think I—need—” He pauses, amends his statement, because maybe he does _need_  it, but he sure as hell doesn’t _want_  it. “I think I’ll see where I can get on my own first, okay? It’s only been—I mean, it hasn’t been long.”

Jeff sounds a bit disapproving, but he accepts, and then that call is over too.

Almost immediately, Hank kind of regrets asking for the extra week. Not because it won’t probably be good for him, but just because there’s really not all that much to do. Not much he feels like doing, either, and he’s distracted enough that it’d be fucked up to try to do police work in the first place, but he’s bored, is the gist of it. He watches some shitty daytime television, browses around some of the stuff he already owns, tries to read some.

None of it really seems to take up all the time he has, not to the degree he needs it to. When he’s doing something he’s not thinking about Cole as much, but he’s not doing much, and that’s probably why he ends up outside Cole’s door again, staring at it and daring himself to go in. 

It’s probably why he ends up actually going in, too.

He still feels the wave of anguish wash over him, sharp and vicious enough that he wishes he had gotten drunk before doing this to numb some of the edge, but it’s not the overpowering thing it was before. He steps in, walks a bit woodenly over to the bed, and sits down on it heavily.

Like this, he can see where some of the dust is starting to accumulate. It’s not even that it’s been that long—he was never the best about cleaning the house in the first place, more the type to do random spring-cleaning-type bursts than to keep any kind of maintenance up regularly—but it still fills him with an aching sadness that pulses deeper with everything he sees. He’s caught between a sudden desire to dust, to keep Cole’s memory fresh and present and here with him, and to leave everything exactly as it was.

Not that anything is like it was, so maybe it’s a silly thought, anyway.

He can’t think about the future for any length of time without crying, and now is no exception. He knows this room will never change like he assumed it would once upon a time—eventually, a more adult comforter without robots on it; eventually, a bigger bed as Cole got taller. Different clothes. Fewer toys, more electronics. This room is either gonna collect dust for the rest of time or go empty, but it’s not going to grow with Cole because Cole isn’t here to grow anymore.

The tears aren’t aggressive like they sometimes are, just soft as they run down his cheeks. It’s not about the room, really. It’s that Cole won’t go to middle school or high school, won’t make Hank proud with his good grades or angry with his bad decisions, won’t go to college or get in a relationship or get a job or anything else for that matter. He’s never going to hear Cole’s voice again, or read him a bedtime story again, or tuck him in and kiss him on the forehead. He’s never gonna _see_  him again, not really, not past pictures or a few home videos.

People had told him they couldn’t imagine what this would be like, at the funeral. The truth is Hank can’t imagine it either, and he doesn’t want to.

It’s the shittiest thing in the world that he doesn’t have to imagine it at all, because all of it is gonna happen anyway. He’s gonna know what it’s like in a few months to wake up and for a moment not remember what happened and expect Cole to be there or a phone call away and then to remember he’s not. He’s gonna know what it’s like to get to Cole’s next birthday, probably to get so drunk he can’t hear himself think. He’s gonna know what it’s like to get to the first anniversary of Cole’s death and to get drunk again and hear his coworkers whisper about him, pity him, talk about how much he’s changed. He’s gonna know what it’s like to be three years, five years in, where he’s not supposed to be a grieving ex-parent anymore, where he’s supposed to be _better,_  and he’s gonna know what it’s like ten years down the road when he has to look at a picture of Cole to remember exactly what he looked like, and—fuck, it’s just too much, it’s just all too much. The tears continue to roll down even after he wipes his face on his sleeve, even after he tells himself to stop fucking thinking.

It’s about as successful as all his other recent attempts at the same thing, which is to say not very.

Connor seems pretty stable, his traitorous mind offers, as if to prove his point. He said college, so that’s probably, what, five, ten years? Hank has never asked him how old he is—

He doesn’t _have_  an age, he’s not _real_ —

—but either way he seems to be coping all right. He still cried, though.

Fuck, it had felt _awful_  to see him cry, even if he wasn’t directly responsible.

Hank pushes his thumbs against his temples and lets out a shuddering sigh. God. God, what kind of fucking situation is this. He’s in his dead son’s room thinking about a guy who only exists in his dreams, except for he thinks about him outside of them too, when he’s not thinking about Cole. Even sometimes together, thoughts like _Connor would’ve loved him,_ or, _Cole would’ve_ —

Cole might’ve thought it was funny, his dad talking about his dream guy, and he might’ve told Laura, and Laura would’ve told him he was batshit insane, is what might’ve happened. Fuck, fuck _him._  It’s some kind of special cruelty that in the midst of all of this he also has to deal with the reality that he’s so pathetically _lonely_  that he goes for the first guy who spends time with him, even when they’re not real.

(And, okay, guess he’s actually thinking about it now, Christ.)

If he’s being honest with himself, it’s not just that Connor is the first guy to spend time with him, though. It’s also that he’s funny in a wry way, and a good listener, and whip-smart. And kind, too, exasperated by Hank’s bullshit but always willing to sit with him through it, and he laughs at Hank’s bad jokes and his eyes sparkle and he has these freckles on his face that Hank wishes he could trace with his fingers—God, and this is why he didn’t want to think about this, because he can think all this mushy shit all he wants and it won’t change the fact that Connor isn’t _real,_  just some guy Hank’s mind conjured up to help him sleep better at night, or something.

But. It’s probably not gonna do him any good either to pretend like, real or no, he doesn’t think Connor is...good. Great. Perfect, honestly, enough so that if he _were_  real he wouldn’t give Hank the time of day. And it’s pathetic as fuck, yeah, but he doesn’t think he can stop himself from feeling it, either. Hank has always felt intensely, too much and way too fast. People don’t expect it from him—big guy, kinda gruff, they think he’s emotionally repressed or whatever and maybe he is, but he also told himself he was gonna marry Laura maybe two weeks into them dating, and he proposed after three months. In retrospect, maybe not the best decision to rush into, not that he regrets it, but his point is it’s a pattern. His previous partners were usually the first ones to say they loved him but the second ones to feel it, and it’s happened enough he knows what it feels like to fall headlong into a crush that eventually can become love if he lets it.

And he’s never really been great at not letting it.

If Connor was a real man, somebody Hank had met anywhere else, if they had just been hanging out then—well, it’d be a whole other thing. He could fall in love and pine all on his lonesome. Wouldn’t be the first time. He’s adult enough to be around somebody he cares about without trying to make them reciprocate, and practiced enough at hiding his expressions they usually can’t tell. But Connor’s not real, and they met in his dreams, and they’re dreams in which the shtick is specifically that whatever he wants to show up shows up. And thinking about it in that context, well, it’s skeevy at best to feel this way.

Which still probably isn’t gonna stop him, so he just needs to be sure to not want anything too hard while he’s dreaming. Because there, maybe he conjures a Connor who feels the same, who stares at him with those sparkling eyes and leans in—and that’s wrong, so wrong, to force Connor into that, even if he is a figment. He’d rather never fall asleep again than do that.

But out here, nothing he wants happens. His wife divorces him, his kid dies. There’s no Connor sitting next to him on this bed with a hand running over his back or thoughtful commentary. There’s just him, alone in Cole’s room, thinking about shit that’ll never be. Doesn’t feel much better, but he guesses that’s life. With a shaky hand, he reaches out to the dog plushie, gives it a light kiss on its forehead and tucks it into the bed.

He feels like an idiot as soon as he finishes, and shakes his head and creaks off the bed to go get incredibly drunk, closing the door behind him.

When he falls asleep later, he’s surprised to find that Connor doesn’t immediately come walking over to see him. Instead, he’s lying in a field of stars again, staring up at them wistfully. He doesn’t respond to hearing Hank walk over, or even immediately to him asking if he’s all right.

“Not really,” he eventually says, eyes sliding shut. “Not really.”

“Why’s that?” Hank doesn’t have the confidence to reach out and touch him right away, but he does sit next to him. It’s ridiculous how often they end up like this, next to each other, close and still feeling awfully, heart-wrenchingly distant.

Connor exhales, and his chest lowers with it. “Do you ever think about dying alone?”

Hank jerks back. “Jesus.”

Connor’s lips curl into a dry little smile. “Never mind.”

“No, uh—I mean. Yeah, I do. Do you? Are you?” Christ, if this is some message from his subconscious, that’s fucked up.

“Yes on both counts, I suppose.” His eyes open, but his stare upwards is blank. “I mean, don’t we all end up dying alone? Being alone? When it’s late at night, when things get dark.”

Hank pauses, floundering, trying to think of something to say that can help. “I mean—when it’s late, these days, I’m usually with you.”

When he glances at Connor, Connor is looking at him, gaze thoughtful but surprisingly vulnerable. Finally he sighs, with a shake of his head and another self-deprecating smile. “I’m grateful for that. But you can’t be here all the time.”

Hank blinks. Dream logic, and all, but—“And you are?”

“I don’t wake up. Can’t, from what I’ve gathered.” 

“Wake up,” Hank says, eyes narrowing. 

“Well, yes. I think I might be...sick. The last thing I remember before all this is being at work.” He frowns. “And then just...being here.”

It turns out, there’s really no good way of asking ‘are you actually real’. He just gapes at Connor, wordless, then chokes out, “Connor, are you, like—a _person?”_

This is not only not a good way, it’s a demonstrably bad way, because Connor’s eyes snap onto him and he’s frowning. “As opposed to?”

“As opposed to—I mean, shit, Connor, this is a dream.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And so...you...” Hank gestures helplessly at Connor, who sits up and looks at him, still frowning.

“Hank. My name is Connor Stern. I’m twenty-eight years old as of August. I work at the Detroit Institute of Arts Conservation Department in the laboratory dedicated to conserving the three-dimensional objects in the collection. I imagine it wouldn’t be terribly hard to look me up.” His arms fold; his eyebrow raises. “I am certainly a _person,_ and if anyone’s dreaming, it’s me.”

Hank blinks, too rapid. “Uh.”

“Though I figure your story is too detailed to come just from me and that I had read a news article or—”

“Hank Anderson, lieutenant at the Detroit Police Department,” Hank interrupts, and then they’re both blinking at each other. “But, uh, I guess you can’t look me up, huh.”

“You’re claiming you’re _not_  a dream?”

“What kind of shitty-ass dream would I be?” he retorts. “You’re saying you’re not either? That doesn’t make any fucking sense. What is this, the—the fucking— _Rainbow Connection?”_

“What a reference,” Connor murmurs. “I don’t—none of this has made sense, Hank! I don’t know what’s happening, but I know I’m real.”

“Well, I know _I’m_  real.”

“Well, okay.”

“Okay!”

They sit there, folding their arms at each other, until Hank realizes how ridiculous this probably looks, how ridiculous this whole thing is. “God,” he mutters. “I’ll look you up, but this is some wack-ass bullshit.”

“Yeah, well.” Connor spreads his hands in a kind of shrug. “Most of my life has been, so I guess it’s just more of the same.”

And Hank kind of has to smile at that, at the exasperation in his tone, and then he’s laughing, hand over his eyes, and Connor after a few moments is laughing too.

“God, my life is a disaster,” Hank ekes out between peals.

“I know what that’s like!” Connor says, too cheerful, and then they’re back at it again.

When they both calm down, Connor is smiling again, but a big, genuine one. “I have no idea what’s happening, Hank.”

“Me either, that’s for fucking sure.”

“But, uh—I guess—” The smile slips a bit, becomes more sheepish. “I guess if it’s happening, I’m glad it’s with you.”

Hank’s smile drops completely, and his eyes go wide. “Uh.”

“I mean, just,” Connor amends, drawing back slightly and fidgeting.

“No, um—” Hank inhales, holds it a few seconds, to stop himself from thinking about—bullshit aside, fucked-up aside, if Connor _is_  real— “I mean. Same. On my end. For you.”

“Right.” Connor’s face goes a light pink. “Well. Um. We—we haven’t brought Sumo back in a few days, huh?”

“Worst owners ever,” Hank says. “We can probably make it up to him by conjuring some squirrels too.”

“Do you know what squirrels look like?”

“Do you think he’ll give a fuck?” Hank counters, and Connor laughs again, getting up and extending his hand to Hank to help him up too.

It’s unnecessary, and probably as bad an idea as trying to remember what a squirrel looks like outside of Rocky and Bullwinkle, but God help him: he takes Connor’s hand, and he doesn’t let it go as soon as he probably should.

And maybe the worst part is Connor doesn’t seem to mind too much, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am taking SUCH liberties with my incredible lack of understanding of the justice system here lol. it doesn't even show up past this chapter i think so eh. it’s also an odd situation i created where they can still somehow think they made everything up, but i guess irl it’d take a lot for the default assumption to be ‘goddamn i must be sharing my dreams with a real person’. the whole timeline for this fic is also SO fucky and underdeveloped but it’s fine so is the game itself lol


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cws for this chapter: unreality warning, brief mention of stalking, alcohol abuse, food mention, past canonical child death, talk about loneliness and divorce, some unhealthy coping mechanisms, negative thinking and self-image, some brief implied innuendo, grief

Hank wakes up slow and then all at once when he remembers the dream. He fumbles for his phone on the nightstand, unlocks it, but pauses just before he types anything in the search engine he pulls up.

Fuck. Is he really going to type in a name based off a _dream?_ This is all so fucking ridiculous.

But he guesses he’s the one who caught feelings for a dream first off, so whatever. As things go, this might be even slightly less ridiculous than the rest of the shitshow his life has become recently. He types in ‘connor stern detroit institute of arts’, taps the enter button, and waits, fingers drumming against the back of his phone case.

He doesn’t have to wait long, but it does take him a few moments to process the list of links that shows up, because they all say the same thing.

Connor Stern is indeed a real guy somewhere out there.

His mouth goes dry, and he clicks into a social media profile. There Connor is, a distantly polite smile on his face, awkwardly posed with some kind of statue. Most of his profile is private, but he can see his friends, at least. A bunch of young people he doesn’t recognize, which makes sense, but one of them is named Niles Stern and looks so similar to Connor that he has to blink a couple times to catch that it’s not some kind of weird edited picture of him.

Letting his head fall back against the pillows, he clicks off the phone and presses it to his chest. Fucking hell. No way some pop culture article about museum conservation would mention the scientist’s brother, right? Which means he didn’t just know it from somewhere else, _right?_ Which means—which means—

Fuck, he has no idea what it means. He’s been meeting some guy in his dreams? That doesn’t make sense. That’s the plot of some sci-fi movie, or—or fantasy romance, or something. Dreams are a thing. Sharing them _isn’t_. But he doesn’t know how else to explain this, either, how to justify how he knows Connor’s name and details about him without having met him.

Maybe you black out and stalk people, suggests his mind helpfully.

That’s not any fucking better, he snaps back, and groans. He needs coffee. Maybe with a bit of alcohol mixed in. But—after that, what he needs most is answers. And the biggest question is obviously what the hell is going on, and the only other person who might know anything about it is Connor himself.

He gets his coffee, puts in a dash of scotch. It tastes fucking awful, but whatever, he’s not trying to win a cooking competition here. He spends a bit after that thinking, and then before he can convince himself otherwise, he picks out a shirt that doesn’t look too disgusting and showers and brushes his hair and—well, he doesn’t want to bother shaving off the beard he’s been steadily growing right now, but he trims it a bit.

Not because he wants to look nice or anything. Just, you know. Recognizable. And museums are kinda fancy anyway, right? Right. He’s fine. He’s not dressing up. So.

On his way out the door he realizes with a stab of grief that he hasn’t really thought of Cole yet today, and he falters with a hand reaching for car keys that he doesn’t have anymore. What the fuck is he doing, anyway? Going to the workplace of some guy that he maybe might know to maybe catch a glimpse of him to maybe talk? He’s on bereavement leave, for Christ’s sake. He’s supposed to be—bereaved, not—not whatever this is. Chasing after the echoes of a nice dream.

Cole doesn’t get any of his dreams anymore. Why the hell should Hank? His hand falls to his side, clenching and unclenching in an uneven rhythm as he tries to control his suddenly ragged breathing.

But.

A few days after Cole’s birthday, after Cole had come to Hank’s house for the weekend, he had surveyed the house carefully during dinner. It was just spaghetti, something simple since Hank was exhausted, and he felt kind of bad watching Cole poke at it with his fork.

“Dad,” he had said on the tail end of a silence that stretched too long, “Are you happy?”

Hank had choked on nothing, coughed to cover his surprise. “What? I—yeah, kiddo, of course. Why?”

“You and Mom aren’t married now.” And this wasn’t really something they had talked about too much, yet, not on his end. “But she’s married to Joe. And she talks about, um, that...he makes her to be happy. And you’re not married. So I was jus’ thinking.” He had taken another bite of spaghetti after that, completely nonchalant, while Hank’s mind whirled with how to answer the question.

Cole had no real way of knowing that on nights when Hank wasn’t trying to be home as early as he could for Cole, he was taking maybe a bit too much overtime, enough that Jeff was starting to look at him differently, suspicious and worried. He couldn’t know that Hank felt the cold of his bed and the silence of his house keenly and tried to avoid being there alone as much as he could unless he knew he’d fall asleep right away. It wasn’t even about Laura not being there, not exactly—just about _nobody_ being there, about the feeling of having failed, about wondering whether this meant he’d never get another chance with someone else, not with as old and as bitter as he’s gotten.

Cole had no real way of knowing any of that, but he’d hit a bit too close to home asking if Hank was happy, because he tried not to think about it, but he doesn’t really think he was.

“Cole,” Hank had started, put down his fork carefully and folded his hands on the table, mostly to give himself more time to think of what to say. “People don’t need to be married to be happy. You can be alone and still have a really great life that you’re happy with.” It felt too much like dodging the question for him to continue without being at least kinda honest. “Maybe sometimes I get kinda lonely, sure, but not when you’re around, all right? I’m not lonely with you, and you being here right now, that makes me happy.”

Still kind of dodging the question, but also true, and he had never wanted Cole to think he was anything less than the best part of Hank’s life.

Cole had looked at him, head tilted slightly, then said, “Okay,” and went back to eating. That night when Hank read him his bedtime story from this collection of fairytales they had been powering through together, he still kinda looked speculative, and Hank had asked him if he was doing all right.

“I’m good,” he had said. “I jus’ was thinking again, um, about that you should be happy more.”

Hank had thought about that a lot, back then, had been pretty choked up that day when he said thanks and that he’d try. Try to be happy more, like he had any fucking idea how to do that in the first place. And then he’d kinda forgotten about it, or at least pushed it to the back of his mind like he’s good at, and life had moved on until it stopped short entirely.

But. Even if this wasn’t what he meant—fuck, how could he—he had promised to Cole to try. And even if he doesn’t deserve this, even if this is all strange and confusing, being around Connor makes him...maybe not happy, always, not considering. But happier.

So he guesses if he’s gonna keep his promise, he’s gonna have to try here, and that means calling a taxi and charging into a museum to try to talk to his dream guy. Because this is just his life now, or something. If this is what happiness looks like, all of Laura’s self-help books had skipped over it, that’s for fucking sure.

He plugs in the address of the Detroit Institute of Arts to the taxi’s automated system, well aware that his plan isn’t really even fleshed out enough to be called a plan. If he shows up all breathless and asks ‘hey can I talk to this person I don’t have a good reason to talk to’, he’s pretty sure they’re just going to ask him to leave. But—maybe there’s a coworker or someone he can ask. Check up, make sure he’s all right, that he’s not sick like he had theorized. Just, you know, a concerned friend.

It’s a shit non-plan, but it’s what he’s got right now, so it’s what he’s going with.

The taxi takes him into the city proper and drops him off, and he looks at the museum feeling incredibly foolish. He hasn’t been here much. Growing up in the area, he’s _been,_  of course—field trips here and there, he probably took Laura at least once when they were dating—but he’s not really exactly a patron of the arts, at least not in the sense that he just hangs out at museums for no reason. There are two long banners up about one of the exhibits they’ve got going, and he spends a while dithering by staring at them way too hard to look normal. 

God, this was a _shitty_  non-plan and he’s shitty for actually coming here, fuck, he should just _leave_ —he whirls on his heel to turn tail and just go get properly drunk at home or something. Seems that’s all he’s good for these days, is failing and getting drunk, anyway—

“Pardon me,” says a soft voice from behind him, and he stumbles a bit when he whirls again, eyes wide. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“What,” he says, kind of wheezy like the guy socked him instead of just getting his attention. Probably that’s rude, but whatever, he’s in a delicate emotional state right now.

“Oh, I was—just going to ask if you needed help? You looked a bit lost.” The man offers a tentative smile. “I know the area pretty well.”

Fuck, he looks like a _tourist._  “Oh. Uh—well. I’m looking for a friend, but—I don’t even know for sure if he’s here, uh—“ He scuffs his heel against the pavement awkwardly. “I mean, I know he works here, but. I don’t know—” He pauses. “Yeah.”

The man blinks slowly, digesting that. “Well. All right. I work in the museum, actually, there’s a chance I might know him. What’s his name?”

Well, damn. Hank probably looks like a _dumbass_  tourist now, gaping and all, but he wasn’t actually expecting the coworker thing to happen. “Uh, Connor. Connor Stern?”

“Oh,” the man says, with a small, knowing smile. “A _friend.”_

Hank doesn’t even have time to process that inaccurate but also kind-of-not misunderstanding that he thinks the guy is formulating right now before he continues, “Right, yeah. I do know him. In fact, I was out here waiting for him to use his lunch break for _once_ —” His voice raises abnormally, and Hank doesn’t get why until he hears the hurried footsteps coming down the stairs.

“You know I’m busy, Simon—” The footsteps falter, then come to a stop. “Oh.”

Hank looks up to see Connor, in the flesh, looking every inch as perfect as he always does in their dreams. His hair is ruffled and his cheeks are slightly pink from the cold and the running, but—but he’s perfect, still, and _here,_  and  _real,_  and Hank doesn’t think anybody could blame him for staring at him in awe like he’s doing now.

“Sorry, Simon, I didn’t know you had...company,” Connor says after a moment, eyebrows knitting together on the last word in confusion. “What’s your name, then?”

Everything shatters around Hank’s shoulders, and he takes a step back like Connor dealt a physical blow. Probably would’ve hurt less, then, less than Connor looking at him without knowing him, like being so close to him but further than they’ve ever been.

“Huh? He said he knew you,” Simon says, looking just as confused now.

“Oh? Have we met?”

Hank shakes his head reflexively before realizing what that would look like, frowning, hands clenching at his sides and then shoving into the pockets of his coat. “I, uh—sorry. I’m Hank, but—“ He shakes his head again like it’ll clear the buzzing in his ears, help with the way his heart sinks deep. “Sorry, I must have made a—” He exhales roughly, eyes darting to the side, then asks, “Do you ever have strange dreams?”

It’s a last-ditch effort, and it only makes him feel worse when Connor says slowly, “I don’t really have many dreams. I—sorry, are you—”

He doesn’t wait for the ‘all right’, just shoves his hands deeper into his pockets and turns again to walk away. He’ll find a taxi away from here. Far, where Connor isn’t watching, isn’t wondering who he is or why this crazy old guy is— _fuck,_  he feels the tears starting to burn at the corners of his eyes but he’s powerless to stop it.

God, he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up. Where the fuck has that ever gotten him? And all that bullshit about trying to be _happy?_  What a fucking joke. He’s just a pathetic man with no son trying desperately to feel less alone when what he really needs is to suck it up and realize that he _is_  alone.

He sniffles awfully into his coat sleeve as his face crumples. He pulls out his phone to call a taxi, and while he waits for it, he orders a same-day delivery drone for a box full of scotch bottles.

Failure and alcohol, like he said before. Dumb of him to expect any different. Different isn’t the guy he is, and really, happy probably isn’t the guy he is either. He’d say Cole would be disappointed in him for not keeping his promise, but for one, disappointing Cole is pretty normal for him by now—home too late, rules too strict—and for two, as much as he had tried to ignore it earlier, Cole is still fucking dead, and nothing he can do and no amount of _trying_  is gonna change that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i spent like an hour trying to figure out how six-year-olds talk and still made a terrible abomination of things i’m sure. sorry cole! i was a weird-ass six-year-old who read like, lord of the rings and dictionaries, and thought that was normal! i’m not a good reference point unfortunately! also i don’t want to imply that people can only be happy in a romantic relationship or anything, just that hank kinda avoided dealing with the emotional implications of his divorce. 
> 
> (also i’d be lying if i said i didn’t think a lil bit about your name while writing this chapter. as in the makoto shinkai film, not as in the name of you, the reader. that’d be really weird)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cws for this chapter: intense alcohol abuse, brief emetophobia warning, grief, bad coping mechanisms, past canonical child death, car crash mention, religion mention, talk about loneliness and death, suicidal ideation and contemplation of suicide attempt / russian roulette, gun mention, depressive thinking, head injury, guilt, unreality warning, medical mention

He gets home and immediately starts drinking. He doesn’t even bother with the pretense of starting with a glass this time, just closes the door and makes a beeline for the kitchen cabinet where he stashed some of his remaining bottles of liquor and starts in on one. He keeps drinking until his eyes cross and his vision goes blurry and then he drinks some more; he might throw up at one point but if he does it doesn’t matter because he just drinks more to make up for it. He drinks until ‘drunk’ is too kind a term for whatever it is he is, and then he sits against the kitchen floor propped up against a cabinet and cries. 

He cries because Cole is gone and he’s not coming back and it’s at least part his fault. He cries because he could’ve been a better father while he was here and he only knows it now that he’s not anymore. He cries because he didn’t let him put up stars on the ceiling and put him in a car instead, and he cries because the car crashed and Cole died and he can’t do anything about any of that. He cries because the only thing that was okay about any of this was Connor, and it was hard when he thought Connor wasn’t real, but it’s impossible now that he knows Connor is real but just doesn’t know him. He cries because his subconscious apparently tried to comfort him by giving him something, someone he desperately wanted, but only made things worse by giving him instead something and someone he can’t actually have. He cries because he’s alone and he’s going to live that way and he’s going to die that way too. He cries because he really just doesn’t know if there’s anything left for him and because he wants to see Cole but the only way that could happen is if he dies and there’s an afterlife, and he cries because he doesn’t know if there’s an afterlife and he’s incredibly fucking drunk and way too drunk to be thinking about theology, and then he cries because he’s starting to wonder if he even _cares._

He cries until there’s not even any tears left, just gasping breaths and keening whines, until he can’t cry anymore and is just listlessly propped against the kitchen cabinets. Normally at this point he’s numb, but—not now. Now there’s something ugly roiling in him, rising in his chest and propelling him to his feet and to his bedside table and to the false bottom and the revolver under it.

When he puts a bullet in the chamber and spins it, his movement is methodical for all his hands are shaking. He’s trained too long for this not to be muscle memory. His journey back to the kitchen is less methodical, and he stumbles and has to hold onto walls here and there, but eventually he’s back there with the nearly-empty bottle next to him, gun in his hand.

It’s cold to the touch but steadily warming against his sweaty hands, and he briefly contemplates how that cold would feel against his forehead.

He could take the chance. See whether fate wants him dead as much as it apparently wanted Cole. He could take the chance and then—a second time, a third, fourth fifth sixth—

Fate can’t possibly want him dead as much as _he_  wants to be dead in that split instant. The alcohol blurs over the reasons he’s given himself before. Laura divorced him, she’ll be fine. Jeff can promote a new Lieutenant. Ben can play poker with the rest of his buddies. Connor? Connor doesn’t know him. Connor wouldn’t give a single flying fuck. Connor wouldn’t even fucking _know._

He could die right now, alone and quiet and just as pathetic as he is, and the world would just keep fucking going. If it kept turning on its axis after Cole died, it sure as hell wouldn’t stop for him. Cole was so much brighter, and—and still he’s expected to keep going, to keep moving, to keep living without him.

God, he misses him so fucking _much._

If he were here—he’s not, but—if he were here, he’d hate seeing Hank like this, wouldn’t he. Seeing that losing him derailed him so completely. He’d feel so bad. He’d want—fuck, he’d want—

Hank sets the revolver down on the floor and breathes in, out, in.

He wouldn’t want this, that’s for sure.

What the hell is he even _doing._

He keeps breathing, pressing a hand to his eyes, then moves to get up. He’ll—put away the gun. Take out the ammo, put back the false bottom, get into bed, and—then when he wakes up, he’ll keep trying. Because he promised, because he’s the one left and he shouldn’t just let that go, because Cole would want it. But he’ll keep trying. He might be a fucked-up failure, but trying he can do.

But the world lurches around him at the sudden movement, and he stumbles and then trips, and he falls and his head connects with the table and sharp pain blooms behind his eyes and then there’s—nothing.

A familiar nothing, though.

A nothing with Connor waving from a distance.

Hank growls and yells, “Stay the fuck away!”

Connor keeps walking, and Hank doesn’t know if he didn’t hear or if he just wants an explanation, but he doesn’t give a fuck either way. He concentrates on the image of water separating them and turns his back.

“Hank?” he can hear Connor call out. He crosses his arms, digging his fingers into the flesh of his bicep. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t care. No matter what he feels, or—doesn’t feel, or—no matter _anything,_  this Connor isn’t _real,_  so he doesn’t need him.

“I said, go _away!”_

He hears a noise, but it’s overshadowed by the confusion in Connor’s voice when he asks, “Hank, what the hell is going on?”

“I don’t need to explain myself to you. You’re not fucking real! You’re just—just—”

“Hank, what the fuck are you talking about? I _told_  you—”

“I went to see Connor! The _real_  Connor, the one out there, and—he didn’t—you didn’t—” Fuck, he’s not going to cry. He already does so fucking much of that these days.

A sob escapes him anyway. Traitor. “You didn’t know me. You didn’t know who I was. You just—looked at me like— _fuck._ ”

There’s a tentative touch on his shoulder, and he finally turns around. The water is frozen over; that must have been the noise he heard. And then there’s Connor, hand still stretched out in the space between them, eyes wide and just as confused as the real Connor’s had been.

“Hank,” he starts, frowns. “I told you I can’t wake up. This—I don’t know what’s happening, what happened there, but—I’m real, I promise. I know I am.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to believe that now?” Hank snaps.

“I mean.” He bites his lip. “I could tell you any number of facts about myself, but I suppose you’d have no way of verifying they were true.”

Hank snorts, swiping at an errant tear. “Yeah. Don’t think that’s gonna do it. Sorry.” His tone is sarcastic, but the sentiment is almost sincere. He is sorry, kind of. That this didn’t work out how he wanted, that Connor still has that stricken look on his face, that—all of this is happening.

Maybe he’s just sorry for himself.

“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in hearing about the details of conservation science, either,” Connor offers, but his expression is sliding into something like defeat.

“Why the fuck do you even care, Connor? Why do you care if I think you’re real? How does it impact you?”

Connor draws back slightly. “I—Hank, I’m here _all the time._  I don’t even know what day it’s supposed to be, or—when you’re not here, I spend my time trying to remember books I’ve read, movies I’ve seen, pieces of art I’ve worked on, but. Every day, or whatever the hell a day is supposed to be in here, every day all of that feels like it slips further and further away. Sometimes—” He huffs out a humorless laugh. “Sometimes I wonder too if I’m real. I have all these memories of a life, a life that I’m missing now, but…” 

The hand he still had outstretched lowers, finally, falling limply to his side. His eyes are downcast when he says, “Do you ever wonder what the _point_  is? Of—of bothering. Of…” He shakes his head, a tight little thing. “Do you ever wonder why you keep going?”

Hank’s throat is dry, but he still manages to say, “Yeah. I do.”

Connor looks back up, directly into Hank’s eyes. “I thought you might. Understand, I mean. And _that’s_  why I care, Hank. When you’re here, it’s easier to remember.”

There’s something in his gaze, something intense, that keeps Hank from looking away. He’s not even sure he’s blinking. “To…remember your life?”

“To remember why I keep going. That there are…things out there, people, to keep moving forward for.” He takes a step forward, and Hank glances at the closing distance between them for only a moment before returning to his eyes. “People who understand, and who are kind, who make me laugh, who—who look at me and make me feel—” He bites his lip again, but this time Hank looks at him doing it for a long, charged moment. When his gaze returns to Connor’s eyes, they’re burning. “Special. Seen. _Real,_  Hank.”

He doesn’t think he could say anything even if he wanted to, and he’s not sure he does. He’s not sure he’d know what to say. He’s never felt more intensely than now that he’s in the midst of a dream, something hazy and fragile and so, so important. He knows there were—other things, reasons why this shouldn’t be happening (not that he’s sure what’s happening, not that he wants to think about it for risk of it falling apart around him, for risk of waking up), but they can’t enter into the space between them right now. There’s just them and nothing else, the look in Connor’s eyes and the feeling of his heart suspended in place between infinite possibilities.

“And.” Connor pauses for the first time since he started this, hesitates, but then the expression on his face speaks resolve, and he reaches out that same hand to press against Hank’s chest, over where his heart rests. “People who. Care about me.”

The last statement isn’t a statement as much as it is a question, quivering upwards alongside the uncertainty in his eyes. Hank thinks he knows what he’s asking. Slowly, he brings his own hand up to lay over Connor’s, light enough that Connor could pull away if he wanted to.

But he doesn’t.

“Yeah,” Hank whispers. It comes out low and croaky, but—not a question. This hasn’t been a question for a while now. “There’s one of ‘em right here.”

Too hard, too fast, like always.

Connor’s smile spreads slow and bright as the stars. “And one who cares about you just as much.”

“Is it Sumo?” Hank jokes weakly, heart thudding against his ribs so hard he’s sure Connor can feel it, that he’ll know what exactly this is doing to him, how he’s caught on the precipice here of something that feels strange and beautiful and entirely like something he should not and cannot have. 

“No, Hank, it’s not Sumo,” Connor says, and edges just that much closer, and then he’s leaning forward to bridge the gap between them and Hank finds himself doing the same. He’s as powerless to resist it as he has been with everything with Connor from the very start, caught in an unexpected fantasy, but he wouldn’t want to resist this either. Right now he doesn’t really even know why he ever tried. His eyes slide shut.

Their lips meet, and just as Hank immediately knew that this was a dream, just as he knew that Connor was important, he knows that this is _right._ Connor kisses like he’s afraid he’ll be pushed away, until Hank moves the hand over Connor’s to his lower back and the other into the nape of Connor’s neck, and then he melts. His arms twine around Hank’s neck like he’s trying to keep him right where he is, trying to make sure he never leaves again, and Hank is honestly all for that, who gives a fuck about anything else if he can just be here with Connor, see what he looks like pressed up against Hank—except for he needs to open his eyes to do that, to memorize every single moment of this—

He opens his eyes and sees somebody he doesn’t recognize, backed by flashing lights outside and accompanied by frenzied barking. “—Anderson? Mr. Anderson? Can you hear me?”

“Wha,” he slurs, the pain from earlier coming back throbbing. “Ow.”

“You seem to have hit your head. You were out for a while. Do you know where you are?”

The woman—a paramedic, apparently—keeps asking him questions while he’s moved onto a stretcher and then into an ambulance, ‘just to be safe’ they tell him, but he’s slow to respond. Which is part the concussion they think he has, but also part that his mind is still somewhere else—back with Connor, back kissing a man who doesn’t remember him when he’s awake, a man he wanted to stay with.

It’s strange, he thinks, listening to the sounds meld together, watching the lights blur in and out of focus, strange how this is real but feels more like a dream than that kiss did.

But maybe that’s the concussion too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always when i talk about suicidal ideation, i’d like to officially refute hank’s thinking. he’s feeling some really intense emotions and still dealing with a number of incredibly unfortunate things, but his thinking about people moving on after his death is pretty classic depressive thinking errors. just because people adapt after a lot of time and emotion to loss doesn’t mean that the loss is the best thing for them or that they want it. death is really hard to deal with in any way it comes. as someone who’s tried to make this justification to themselves before i’d still nonetheless like to speak out against it in case anybody read that and identified with it in any way!
> 
> also, i looked up a ton of shit about head injuries and concussion and i am totally fudging the amount of medical care that would be required for somebody who got a concussion that included passing out. like it’d prob be a lot worse. but this is fiction and i’m kind of pretending there was some time fuckery in the dream world where he wasn’t passed out for as long as they were talking or—whatever, i don’t know, but pls don’t @ me about it i know fiction has a problem with underestimating required medical care but also i did think about it and just decided i didn’t give enough of a fuck to change anything, you see


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cws for this chapter: hospital / medical care, head injury, unreality warning, talk about past divorce, past suicidal ideation, grief, past canonical child death and car crash, alcohol abuse, talk about therapy, innuendo

Hank's mind is still foggy when they get to the hospital, and he gets irritable when they keep asking him questions that it's hard to find the answer to. Words don't come easily through the veil of his disjointed thoughts, and mostly he just wants to sleep, but they won't let him. Which means he can't try to see Connor again, either, and a wave of confused feelings wash over him at that thought—worry, sadness, longing.

And one, more prominent, one that he can't shake: the feeling that this time he's truly woken up from his dream, that when he sleeps next Connor won't be there. He'd dismiss it as part of the anxiety the doctor told him he might feel from the concussion, but it has that same ring of certainty that everything else true about the dream had. He can only hope that this time he's wrong.

At some point, there's hushed conversation outside the curtain to his bed in the ER, and when it opens, Jeff is standing there, face inscrutable.

(Hank still remembers the conversation that lead to him putting Jeff as his emergency contact. Jeff had protested, had some good points, too—he has an erratic job, there's no guarantee he'll always be able to be there right when he’s needed, he's Hank's _boss_  for Christ's sake—but Hank had just said, "Jeff, I don't have anybody else."

That had mostly been the end of the conversation, apart from the stricken look on Jeff's face when he registered that, the sharp nod and the defeated sigh. It's not really his favorite memory.)

"Oh, hey," he says with a slight slur. He's not sure whether that one is from the concussion or from the part where he's still only maybe an hour and a half out from being probably the drunkest he's ever been. "What's up?"

"Really?" Jeff asks, still with the same tight expression. "That's what you say to me?"

"It's a, uh." Hank waves his hands lackadaisically in the air, pulling at the wire of the pulse oximeter on his hand. "A—a, um...you know." The word is somewhere past the tip of his tongue where he can't access it. Hello isn't right. Salutations? No.

"No, I don't," Jeff says, walking a bit closer. "I have no idea what the fuck is going on with you right now at _all._ Imagine how I felt when I got, out of nowhere, a call alerting me that one Hank Anderson had been admitted to the ER for a grade 3 concussion after getting blackout drunk alone in his house."

Ah. He's angry. Hank can understand that, anyway. "S'not out of nowhere," Hank corrects, because the call technically would have come from the hospital, but that seems to be the wrong response because Jeff's hands clench.

"God damn it, Hank, I wouldn't _know_  that, would I, because you never fucking _talk to me!"_

Hank has a moment of confusion where he wonders why Jeff would need a conversation with him to figure out that a call from the hospital came from the hospital, but he eventually is able to put together that Jeff is probably talking about—that he's having problems, or something. He doesn't know what to say to that. Jeff isn't done, though.

"I  _knew_  there was no way you could be taking all this well. I knew that, Hank, because you've never taken _anything_  well, you avoided dealing with the divorce pretty much fucking _completely,_  but—I couldn't—" His face twists a bit. "You've set up boundaries between us that I don't always know how to navigate, and the only way I can get through is by not pressing. By never making you disclose more than you are comfortable with, by never forcing my way into your life or your home, by not asking too many questions when you call out of work past the standard period for bereavement, by— _fuck,_  Hank, I try to stay where you want me, but that only works if you get what you fucking _need!"_

Hank blinks at him, eyebrows furrowing. "What?"

"Oh my God," Jeff groans, slumping down onto the small, uncomfortable chair next to the bed. "Now isn't the time for this conversation, I guess."

"I have a concussion," Hank tells him, almost apologetic, because he can register that Jeff is upset and wants to talk, but he's not sure if he'd have the right words to talk about any of this even if he could talk properly right now.

"Yeah, I know." Jeff looks at the ceiling, then at his lap. "They told me that they found an empty bottle of scotch and a revolver on your kitchen floor near where you fell." 

"Oh." Well, that—sort of explains. Kind of. Processing isn't his strong point right now. "I mean. I wasn't—" He thinks of explaining that he had thought it, gotten maybe a bit too close, and decided against it, decided to keep trying. He thinks of explaining how hard all of this has been, that he's barely been hanging on by a thread and he had thought that thread was gone and now he's worried it might be for real this time, and he thinks of telling Jeff that he's felt so alone and the revolver just felt like—a solution.

"I wasn't gonna," he says instead.

"Yeah?"

It's asking for him to be honest, but he is being honest, as much as he can manage right now. "Yeah."

"Hm." Jeff adjusts in the chair until he's laying back a bit. "We're still talking when you're not high off your own brain injury."

"And alcohol," Hank helpfully supplies, and Jeff snorts, eyes closing. He looks exhausted, and it doesn't know great to know that he's probably part of that. He—has probably been a real shitty friend, hasn't he. Jeff and his relationship has always been a bit complicated, but friends is still the best word for it he has, and he hasn't been showing that. Maybe he has an excuse, but still. "Jeff?"

"What," Jeff says.

"Thanks for...being here."

Jeff opens his eyes, peering at him, then rolls them before closing them again. "Wouldn't have agreed to being your contact if I wasn't planning on coming."

Which would probably sound like a dismissal to anybody else, but Hank knows it's something like a 'you're welcome', and an acknowledgement of the tiny olive branch he held out.

Jeff dozes off in the chair until the doctor comes back in and asks a few more questions. Mostly about how he's feeling now, does the bandage feel all right, does he have a headache or any nausea, standard stuff. But at the end of it he shifts around and says, "Sorry to be blunt about this, but—the paramedic who found you repeated that there was a revolver nearby, so I have to ask plainly. If we let you go, will you be a danger to yourself or others?"

Hank thinks through the question and hopes his delayed reaction time doesn't come across as suspicious. "Nah."

"Because if you need psychiatric help—"

"I mean, probably," Hank interrupts. "But. Not like that. I, uh..." He grimaces, but he has been thinking about this while he's been in here, so he's not lying even if he's not excited about the prospect. "I've been thinking maybe therapy, but...nah. I'm not gonna, um. Hurt myself."

The doctor surveys him, then nods. "All right. Well. I don't think you're going to have any kind of lasting damage here, but I'm going to get you a prescription for some extra-strength headache medicine. No alcohol with that, all right? And if you notice any changes come right back in and we'll look a bit closer."

"Come back in?" Hank echoes. "Like I can leave?"

"Yeah, we'll get started on the discharge paperwork and then you should be good to go. You're his emergency contact, right?"

Jeff straightens in his chair and nods.

"Right. Can you make sure he has somebody checking in on him regularly? Especially for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. He's pretty lucky to be as lucid as he is with how hard he hit his head, but we want to make sure that doesn't change."

"Yes, I'll do that."

"Okay. Oh, and—change the gauze on that after a few hours, we'll send you home with some materials for it, but you should be good after a day or so to keep it off."

Hank acquiesces, and they do all the discharge stuff, and then Hank is...out. He's not dizzy enough to have problems walking, but he does still feel a bit dazed. Less, but still like this isn't the place he should be right now. 

He really wants to get home and sleep.

Jeff is walking nearby, watching him carefully for any stumbles or whatever, but they get to the downstairs where Jeff parked without any trouble. As he's walking out the door, he catches the sound of a conversation from the people walking in. "—after you hit your head a few weeks ago they said to be careful. I just want to make sure everything's all right, you've been acting so strange for the past few hours—"

"Markus, I'm fine, I promise," he hears, and—

Well, he'd recognize Connor's voice _anywhere,_  probably, but especially when it's right next to him. With how he left things earlier, he almost feels like he should just keep walking, but. Well. That was never going to happen. Hank thinks he's always going to be drawn to Connor, no matter the situation.

He turns his face to look at Connor, and Connor turns to look over at him at the same time, and he stops directly in his tracks, mouth parting.

Hank has almost mentally prepared himself for the lack of recognition again, or maybe just whatever 'oh look there's that weird guy again crazy coincidence huh' looks like, but instead he hears a breathy and familiar, "Hank."

Hank stops also. Jeff shoots a hand out, maybe trying to steady him, but Hank doesn't think anything in the world could steady him right now, not with Connor looking at him like that.

"Yeah?" he says, quiet, trying not to hope too much.

The guy next to Connor—Markus, he supposes, he was on his social media profile too—is looking between the two of them with interest, but he doesn't interrupt, and Jeff doesn't either. He'll probably get it later, but for now it's like it's just the two of them again, just them in a world of their own creation.

Connor smiles helplessly, leaning forward on his feet slightly like he's barely stopping himself from getting closer. "Do you ever have strange dreams?"

God. God, this can't be real, not this in real life. It's too good for that, too perfect, Connor being here and—remembering him again, how the fuck did that happen, but—he can't complain about it either. He just wants this, plain and simple, however it came to him. Hank finds himself smiling back, just as helpless. "I sure do."

Hank is the one to breach the distance this time, and he doesn't see Jeff mouthing 'what the fuck' or Markus's answering shrug, but also he doesn't care because Connor is close again, and as soon as he takes his hand, everything just clicks into place, somehow. There's that same feeling, except now it says that Connor is still important and this is still right, but that this is absolutely real. But even without the feeling, he'd know, he thinks. Something about how Connor's skin feels against his, about the fondness in his eyes, about all of Connor, is just so much better than he could ever imagine on his own.

"Good dreams, though," Connor says softly.

"I think this is better," Hank says, and Connor grins and presses that grin into Hank's chest as he hugs him, deep and as warm as the sun rising in the morning.

 

* * *

 

After a certain point, a point Hank never thought he would reach, he walks into Cole's old room to start packing some things up. 

It's not because he's any less sad. Five months out from it all, he's still just as sad about it as he was at the start, and he doesn't think that'll ever stop. Cole is someone who can't be replaced, and all the therapy and cute dogs and wonderful boyfriends in the world can't change that. But he's dealing with that sadness a bit better now, at least. There are still bad days, but there's less drinking, anyway. No more evenings spent staring at a revolver. It helps that he has somebody to keep going on for, now.

Connor moved in a month ago. They had started officially dating pretty soon after the hospital, after comparing stories (Connor isn't sure what happened earlier, but he said that the dreams started after he hit his head and that he remembered them after they kissed) and after making up some bullshit story about online dating or something, which explains why Connor had been confused when he saw Hank earlier that day, Simon, he was using an alias, ha-ha, not suspicious at all. Their friends had totally all been suspicious anyway and prodded them to talk about how they really met, but Hank and Connor are pretty sure they're going to keep the real story to themselves.

They do joke a lot about being the man of each other's dreams, though, enough that it might cause suspicion if this whole thing was a plausible scenario in the first place. As it stands, they probably just sound obnoxious. Hank's all right with that.

Hank's been working on a lot in therapy. He's been setting better work hours, trying to improve his self-esteem, trying to make sure he doesn't spiral too deep when it happens. He adopted the dog who alerted the neighbor to his collapse—a St. Bernard, in a weird coincidence, who he and Connor obviously named Sumo. Hank's therapist has also been trying to get him to the point where he feels all right packing up Cole's room. Keeping it as some kind of memorial has started to feel increasingly like an exercise in morbidity, so finally Hank said he'd do it, and they picked this weekend for it. Connor has promised to be there every minute of the process to provide emotional support and kisses upon request, but Hank honestly doesn't feel as anxious about it as he would've expected.

"You ready?" Connor asks gently, squeezing his hand.

"Yeah, I think so," Hank says, squeezing back, and they walk into the room together.

They spend a while packing up the toys, the bedding, the scattered books. Hank stops to reminisce every now and then, to tell Connor about when they got a specific toy or a stories that he remembers about Cole. Talking about him is still hard, but he's been trying. Even if Connor never met him, he wants them to know about each other—for the two most important people in his life to know each other, at least as much as they can in this situation. He tells Connor about how Cole was funny and a little bit strange and adorable and sometimes cranky as fuck, and Connor laughs where appropriate and rests a hand on his knee where that makes more sense, and he feels mostly all right about it.

He's started visiting Cole's grave, too, and there he tells him about Connor. He tells him how they met, the real story, and about how Connor's nose wrinkles when he's pouting and about how he's kind of a shitty cook and anal-retentive and prissy and about how he's sweet and kind and perfect for him. And he tells Cole that he misses him, that he wishes he could see him again, but that he hopes he's doing all right. That he's doing all right, overall.

Connor's cleaning out the closet, putting shirts and pants and coats into a big box, when Hank hears him stop and rustle around. There's a silence then, and then, "Um...Hank."

"What? Please don't tell me there's termites or something."

"No, not—Hank, you should see this, I think." He sounds oddly choked up, emotional in a way that Hank wouldn't have expected. Connor can understand a lot about this situation, but—

Hank clambers into the small recessed space that served as Cole's closet and peers around Connor's shoulders, at the place on the wall that he's illuminating with his phone's flashlight.

"Oh," he breathes, eyes immediately tearing up.

 

illustration by [fishfingersandscarves](http://fishfingersandscarves.tumblr.com/post/182364434980/hey-i-was-paired-with-anifanatical-to)

On the wall, there's a small cluster of glow-in-the-dark stars stuck above a taped piece of paper. It looks like some kind of school assignment, but not one Hank has seen before now. There are stars doodled all over the paper, and on the big lined portion in Cole's shitty six-year-old handwriting...

Connor reads it out loud. "My wish is that Dad is happy. He reads me stories with happy endings. I want for one for him too."

Hank chokes back a sob. "God," he says, his voice thick with tears, "He fucked up the paint after all and I'm not even mad."

Connor looks back at him, smiles, kind of amused but mostly just a bit melancholy with understanding. "Want to sit down?"

"Yeah, uh." Hank clears his throat. "Yeah, for a bit."

They sit on Cole's bed together, Connor resting his head on Hank's shoulder with his arms wrapped around his waist and Hank calming down to his steady breathing.

"I was reading him fairytales," Hank finally says. "Guess it stuck with him."

Connor hums. "What, like Sleeping Beauty?"

They look at each other, eyes narrowing as they remember—a kiss—

"Nah."

"I mean, he did wish on a star—"

"No! This is all already—" Hank glances at the closet suspiciously. "I mean..."

Connor pats Hank's back soothingly and drops a kiss on his cheek. "It's all right. We don't have to make any reality-shattering revelations today."

"How about never," he mutters against Connor's chuckle.

They sit together a while longer, until Connor asks, a bit shyer than normal, "So—are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Happy." Connor is gazing at him now, hopeful and nervous, and—well. Huh. That's a question that probably deserves some consideration.

He's not always happy. He doesn't think anybody can be, really. But remembering Cole can bring him happiness sometimes, in remembering the good and in acknowledging how lucky he was to have it. And—he loves Connor, and Connor makes him happy more often.

As things go, he thinks he's doing pretty damn well on the 'trying' front, at least.

"I think as much as I can be," Hank says honestly. "A lot more with you."

Connor's smile is always just as beautiful as the first time he saw it, and when he draws Hank into a kiss, it always feels just as right as it did from the beginning too.

"Well," he breathes when they separate. "Same on my end."

"Good." Hank's heart swells with more emotion than he can contain, and he pulls Connor's hand over it and puts his own on top in an echo of when they admitted their feelings. "Because I love you too much for anything but."

"I love you too," Connor says. "But also this is ending up being kind of a strange conversation for a kid's room."

Hank blows a raspberry and stands up. "Fine, buzzkill, you're on dusting duty."

Connor rolls his eyes, mumbling, "You're only saying that because I always scold you for missing spots," and his tone is teasing but Hank protests anyway, and they end up hurling dust rags at each other until it devolves into kissing and until that devolves into something that definitely isn't going to happen in a kid's room. They take a nap after that, just for a short while.

They don't dream together, but they do wake up together under a night already lit by stars. 

Which is as good as a dream, really, except for it doesn't have to end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the wish thing is dumb but i stuck with it because i am also dumb and i like fairytales so. SUCK IT i am a cliché bastard and that’s ALL RIGHT!!! what’s also dumb is that hank recovered from his head injury so fast but it’s ok i already gave my not-justification last chapter and i still give only a fractional fuck about my inaccuracy
> 
> [fish](http://fishfingersandscarves.tumblr.com) destroyed me one last time and then was like, oh, nah, that's not enough actually, i'm gonna get you for GOOD. aka they made a short animatic from one of the songs on the playlist i linked earlier and it's amazing and it is [here you should click here!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSsW-EPzTKc)
> 
> i also wrote a little song for this fic and you can find that [by clicking this link here](https://soundcloud.com/iwasbibliomaniac/though-bright-be-the-morning/s-LWQBB)
> 
> well! there we are! thank all of you so much for reading, i appreciate it so much! this was my first time in a big bang but i had a lot of fun. not that writing depressing shit is fun per se but there were a lot of fun people lol and working in the context of an event was so interesting! thanks also of course go to [fish](http://fishfingersandscarves.tumblr.com) and [ani](http://anifanatical.tumblr.com) for their absolutely beautiful art—go check them out, please, they've done so many other wonderful things and they're both great people!—and for the big bang in general! thank you all again and i hope you all have wonderful dreams whenever you sleep and wonderful mornings following them.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! if you want to catch up with me elsewhere, i'm most often on twitter these days at [@boringbibs](https://twitter.com/boringbibs) and can also be found on tumblr at [anuninterestingperson](http://anuninterestingperson.tumblr.com)!


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